LizstarTrek - Enterprise Season 2 episodes 9 - 14

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

Singularity - ENT 5.5/10

Interesting cold open here where we get T’Pol’s log as she crew is all passed out throughout the ship. She says they’re still moving, but might be debris by the time they get to their destination. Cool, good setup so far. And then we get the flashback to figure out what’s going on. Ah, in media res.

Enterprise is heading to a trinary system that has a black hole as a part of the system, which is weird. Also Archer makes Trip look at his chair, it’s very uncomfortable. I wish the entire episode was about his shittyh chair. Everyone takes turns sitting in the chair and getting knocked out like we saw in the intro. Also Chef is sick. I like Chef as a character, he’s very Morn-Coded. We NEVER see him (except for one time apparently, which my chat is upset about), but he’s fun.

Archer has to write a paper about his dad. He tries to make T’Pol do it for him. Do your fucking homework, Archer. Trip is an asshole about the captain’s chair, and Reed is developing Red Alert (He’s calling it Reed Alert, so they’re going to end up Han Soloing it, which is very dumb, because Red Alert is an actual Naval thing). Hoshi makes Oden while Chef is sick and everyone is a dick and kinda racist about it. How does THIS move into the intro??

Everyone is suddenly getting kinda ornery and grumpy for no reason. It’s all very unsettling… except Trip, because he’s really no more shitty and unpleasant than usual. He’s ALWAYS yelling about shit that doesn’t matter. Anyways this is all just uncomfy until Reed starts packing and becoming suspicious of everything. He basically says “I’mma coup the ship” Oh God, he’s turning into a Romulan, according to that stupid fucking SNW episode. Anyways this’d work better as a Naked Time style episode if this wasn’t how they all usually were. They’re all incompetent and focusing on the wrong things anyway.

Only one person seems actually immune to this. And that’s T’Pol. This episode is not beating the allegations that the entirety of the ship are babies that T’Pol is babysitting. Even Phlox is out of sorts, wanting to do brain surgery on poor Mayweather really REALLY bad. T’Pol ends up knocking him out to protect Mayweather, but the scans of Mayweather’s brain shows Shit’s Bad anyway. People start collapsing. Turns out there’s radiation from the black hole and it’s Bad. They can’t just turn around, cause the radiation would still be there. There’s a side of the blackhole where the radiation is minor.

T’Pol wakes up Archer and forces him to be awake by shoving him in a shower and forcing him to drink coffee, which is kinda funny. He begrudgingly accepts helping her fly the ship through a debris field. They make it through and thankfully the radiation immediately wears off with zero lasting affects. Gee how lucky.

Vanishing Point - ENT 2/10

Hoshi and Trip are on a planet exploring some ruins, taking pics and studying the language. Why the FUCK is Trip down there??????? Anyways a storm comes in and they decide they HAVE to go back up NOW even though they’re in a ruin, and it’d probably be fine. Anyways they use the teleporter. Holy shit, THEY REMEMBERED THE TELEPORTER EXISTS??? Hoshi is afraid of using the teleporter cause She’s Girl.

Hoshi is still uncomfy after her teleport, and the others tell her a Ghost Story about the first guy who died in a transporter incident. To be FAIR, Hoshi pushed them to tell her it, they didn’t want to. She’s VERY unhappy after the teleporter incident. She KNOWS something is wrong with her… molecules.

So, I suffer from hypochondria a lot. I get it. I don’t think they’re doing this WRONG really, and the transporter is a fucking thing. You wouldn’t catch me DEAD on that thing, hell no. I’ll take a shuttle, we have faster than light travel, why the hell do we need transporters.

Berman has such a fucking fascination with making Hoshi take her fucking shirt off, the fucking pervert. At least she isn’t relegated to the kitchen in this episode.

Hoshi feels like she’s being ignored. Her alarm also doesn’t go off and she oversleeps, which is weird. Everyone doesn’t notice her at first and she’s becoming kind of paranoid. People are kinda treating her like shit. Also apparently there were aliens on the surface who are holding hostages, and Hoshi can’t translate their language. She’s dismissed, and then her replacement translates it no problem. It’s a Hoshi Must Suffer episode. Is that a thing? At least Phlox isn’t ignoreing her. Though he does kind of ignore her worries.

After a talk with Trip, she seems to fade out of reality entirely. She gets stuck in the exercise room, her hand is moving through the door controls. Why doesn’t she go through the door? Or the floor??? Anyways this is a repeat of the Ro and Geordi episode from TNG. We just keep redoing ideas but worse, don’t we? That one was enjoyable because Roe and Geordi were working together so they bounced off each other, AND they could actually do something to try and fix things. Hoshi doens’t have that expertise. Watching Hoshi be sad and ignored is not very pleasant to watch. ESPECIALLY with Trip VICTIM BLAMING HER? “Why didn’t I force you to go first? Why didn’t you LISTEN TO ME?” Then Archer calls her dad and he’s VERY slow on the uptake and real shitty. What the fuck is this episode

Anyways Hoshi finds some aliens on the ship planting bombs. She finds a way to make a light flicker and send an SOS, which Archer sees, accepts is an SOS, then ignored anyway, cause T’Pol tells him to ignore it. The ONE THING Hoshi can do, and it’s ignored. It’s FINALLY an episode where Hoshi gets to do something and it’s boring and bad.

In the end, Hoshi rematerializes and it turns out It Was All A Dream. She just had to be kept in the pattern buffer for 8.3 seconds. The end.

This episode can bite me.

Precious Cargo - ENT 2/10

The Enterprise gets a distress call from a ship. They’re having some issues and need Trip’s help, fair enough. They’re transporting some girl in cryo freeze. Trip takes one look at her and falls in love cause of fucking course he does. Fucking Trip.

Anyways he accidentally wakes her, because of course he does, and she yells at him and tries to escape. One of the two alien dudes on the ship goes back after he gets an alarm (they were having dinner with the captain), knocks Trip out, and flies away, leaving his friend behind. lol whoops.

The frozen princess is, in fact, a princess. She claims she was kidnapped to be held for ransom. She has spots all the way down :o She’s a spoiled brat who is like “I’m too valuable to hurt, so I don’t try escaping, they’ll just pay my ransom and it’ll be fine”. She’s a shitty brat, but decides to go with Tucker anyway as he tries escaping through the escape pod. This turns the episode into Resident Evil 4 but Ashley is Unlikable. And so is Leon. Resident Evil 4 but Unlikable and Without Any Cool Zombies. Or maybe What if Spaceballs Sucked? They don’t get along at first, but after a while Tucker realizes she’s lonely and she realizes he’s rough but has a soft interior and uuhhhblhlblbl.

WAY more interesting is what Enterprise does to the guy they still have. They pretend he’s going to be executed if he doesn’t tell them where his partner went.

WHY DOES TRIP HAVE TO MENTION HE’S FROM FLORIDA EVERY 5 FUCKING MINUTES? NO OTHER TREK CHARACTER HAS DONE THIS. I GUESS maybe Worf but like, I hated it when he did it too. We fucking GET IT TRIP, You’re FROM FLORIDA. You’re a fucking Southern Boy. As a Southern Girl, shut up, it sucks shit down here.

They get into an argument and then fight and then make out and fuck, because that’s what it says to do in the hack’s guide to story writing. Then the alien captor finds them and Trip and him fight in the swamp. And then THEY kiss. No, not really, but that would have made this episode way more interesting. Enterprise comes and picks them up, the end. The princess is like “Come visit and we’ll fuck like rabbits” and then it ends. This was Rick Berman’s weird fucking fanfic for his stupid fucking self insert and I am unhappy I had to watch it.

This is literally the exact same plot as The Perfect Mate from TNG. It’s even the same race. But so much worse. Why do we keep just stealing previous episodes but poorly? This KEEPS HAPPENING.

Catwalk - ENT 8/10

This one looks like it could be good. PLEASE be good, god I need this.

Enterprise meets some aliens who are like “hey, we need your help, the storm will be here soon”. What storm? Well, turns out there’s a kind of storm that’s on the way, it’s VERY deadly and dangerous. And it’ll be here in four hours. They could outrun it at warp 7 but uh, oops!

They have one place they can ALL fit which is properly protected. The proto-Jefferies tube, the “Catwalk”, the spot in the middle of the Nacelle. It’ll be cramped but they can prolly live in there for the time it takes. Which is, uh, 8 days. Oh boy.

AND the randos they invited in seem Kinda Sus and are keeping to themselves in a little tent they have set up.

I’m starting to get real tired of Reed. He’s either boring and like, a non-presence, or EXTREMELY annoying. Honestly? Maybe more than Trip. Trip is always grumpy and obstinant, but at like a 6/10. Reed is sometimes a 2/10, then he jumps to 11/10 ANY time something even SLIGHTLY goes wrong. Pissing and moaning cause there’s no shower, claiming Trip’s team is incompetent idiots cause of that. Trip is like “Dude, I had 4 hours, you’re lucky we have a toilet”.

Holy shit, it’s Chef! Just off screen, but he’s here!!

Trip goes down to check some stuff out, in a space suit, where he finds a bunch of people just walking around on the ship, no suits. They’re Takarets, just like the aliens they invited onto their ship. Archer asks them wtf is going on, and although their leader refuses to admit whats going on, the others are like “Fuck that they have a right to know”. They’re desserters of the Takaret Militia, a thuggish military who are frankly evil. And that militia is now trying to take over the ship, cause why not? Also cause they think the desserters are on there somewhere.

Archer and T’Pol go to try and sneak control to the others. Archer sends him a message: “You’re in my chair”. A CLASSIC Trek captain line, like that line. He tells him very clearly “I will blow up my own ship if you don’t fuck off”, all the while they’re trying to turn off the thrusters (the people in them are currently cooking) and direct the ship into an eddy that’ll rip it apart.

The militia is like “oh shit fuck this” and run away. The bluff works, and Enterprise is safe.

That was just a good episode. Nice to have character moments and some fun stakes.

Dawn - ENT 3.5/10

While looking at a gas giant (“Wow, this gas giant has dozens of moons” says Trip, not knowing what a gas giant is, I guess), Trip is attacked by a random ship and he crashes on a nearby planet. This happens to Trip a lot. This is like, the third time Trip has been stuck somewhere with a broken shuttle? He tries to get settled and get stuff fixed, but then he’s attacked by an alien and barely escapes.

Archer is contacted by the aliens, who explain that they’re the Arkonians, and this is their territory, leave. But also, they lost contact with THEIR shuttle. Archer suggests they work together to find their shuttles and then they’ll happily leave.

This alien is a little animalistic gremlin. He steals the transciever, Trip tries to get it back, and is shot and stunned. Good job, Trip. The Arkonian holds him at gunpoint to try and force him to fix it, and it just goes back and forth like that. They can’t communicate, Trip doesn’t have his communicator for some reason. Maybe Reed left it on a planet somewhere. Reed and him kinda try to communicate but they’re very antagonistic? And any attempts to develop trust are bombed when Trip starts the fighting again. Enemy Mine this is not. Darmok this is not.

It keeps hinting that MAYBE they’d work together, but then they’re at each other’s throats. Over and over. This happens like three times. It is not good. They EVENTUALLY stop beating the shit out of each other, not because of any actual communication or desire to work together, but because the sun is rising and it’s getting hot and they’re suffering. This also unfortunately makes Trip take his fucking shirt off, so now I’M suffering too. Enterprise contacts them, but Trip refuses to leave without him. For some reason. But eventually they are rescued. The Arkonian leader is like “Thanks for rescuing my crewman. I hope your’s is okay, and if he was fired upon without provocation, he will be disciplined. But the alien is, at least, grateful he didn’t kill Trip, even when he meant to. I guess that’s the best we’ll get.

Got a little better at the end but still bad. Tonight was literally just better ideas from earlier shows regurgitated into bluh. Why do we keep doing this. Do we have NO good ideas?? Neli thinks this is one of the worst ever, because it’s very anti-Trek. Almost anti-communication as a concept, it’s saying communication can’t work. I don’t think it’s intentionally saying that, I just think this show was very poorly written in a very xenophobic time.