LizstarTrek - Enterprise Season 3 episodes 18-
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
Azati Prime - ENT 4.5/10
Enterprise finally reaches Azati Prime, the planet they gaslit Degra to learn its location. Guess who’s already there? Degra! Dun dun dun! The other members of the Xindi Council are here, too. I love how one of them is just CLEARLY evil, the others are like “Yo good job, you’ve accomplished so much so soon!” “LET US NOT SPEAK OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS YET, NOT UNTIL THE HUMANS ARE EXTERMINATED.” Like, if I was on a political council and one of my coworkers talked like that, I’d do… SOMETHING about it, cause jesus.
Archer is about to sacrifice himself for a suicide run to blow up the weapon before he’s dragged to the future by Daniels. Daniels is like “look, this is all being run by the Sphere Builders who are using the Xindi to make the future better for them. If you sacrifice yourself, they’ll just build another weapon and nothing will change, AND we’ll never get the Federation, which btw, has Xindi in it. This beautiful future could be your’s if you just try diplomacy for once in your life.”
And what does Archer say?
“No.”
Straight up, Archer is the worst Star Trek captain? He often gets to the right spot in the end, but for some fucking reason he always has to start at the WORST FUCKING SPOT and then be FORCED there. He’s told “You can do diplomacy to stop this peacefully” and he goes “No, I want to kill people”. WHY IS THIS OUR HERO? Like, this is the culmination of the ENTIRE season. He later says he’s sacrificing himself cause he’s done a lot of horrible shit this season but MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE THAT, AND MAYBE THERE ARE BETTER WAYS TO MOVE FORWARD. If it’s trying to do a survivor guilt “I must get my penance” kinda story, it’s NOT telling it well, at all, because his violent aggressive war crimey bullshit he’s done the entire season has been the right choice in the story. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t fucking kidnap and gaslight a scientist.
What a fucking surprise, Archer gets captured. What a wild twist. Fucking idiot.
On Enterprise, they’re suffering with possibly losing their captain cause he’s a fucking idiot. T’Pol is acting VERY weird.
After harassing some reptiles beating him up for a while, Archer decides to try the diplomacy route. Better late than never I guess. He asks for Degra, who shows up, and he makes it clear to Degra he knows a lot about him, saying “I know the name of your unborn dead third child”. “How do you know that?” “That’s not important right now” OH, ARCHER? NOT GONNA TELL HIM YOU KIDNAPPED HIM AND WIPED HIS MEMORY?? SEE, THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. That was a fucked up way to gather information, but WITHOUT IT, he would NOT be able to do this. Warcrimes are okay as long as you need to do them to succeed in stopping terrorism. Anyways he tells Degra about the Sphere Builders, the future, and that the Humans need to survive or the Xindi will die. He goes to his superiors, and while they don’t BELIEVE him, it puts some dents in their armor.
Anyways sudden jump cut, Enterprise is being blown up. It really was jarringly sudden. When Degra and the other non-Reptilian Xindi find out they’re like “But you said you’d hold off?” and he OBVIOUSLY EVIL REPTILIAN IS LIKE “I grew tired of waiting. And no, I won’t stop.” WHY ARE WE WORKING WITH THIS GUY? God, good thing there are no psychopathic manchildren in the real life government.
It’s actually funny because this Reptilian Xindi is a great example of what Republican politicians were like in 2003.
Meh.
Damage - ENT 1/10
Enterprise stops being blown up, only because they just decide not to kill them. The other Council Members have overruled the Reptilian one and are ordering him to give them Archer. He is NOT happy. The Aquatic are going to deliver Archer to the Council so they can talk to him.
Meanwhile, Enterprise is dangerously on fire, and T’Pol is still not doing well.
Ey, the Aquatic vessel is good. I dunno if we’ve EVER seen aquatic-based alien life in this series in this way? Anyways, he’s knocked out by gas, and then… is sent in an escape pod back to Enterprise. Weird. T’Pol is STILL acting weird. Her hands are shaking and she’s viewing the world warped and slowed. Ohhh NO, SHE HAS RADICAL SIX!!!
There’s a random shower sex scene with T’Pol and Trip in the middle of the episode and I hate it. But it’s just a dream. Hmm. I think Berman just wanted more horniness in his Trek again for his OC.
Some aliens show up, their ship hurt by this region of space. Archer is willing to help them, if they help too, because his ship is fuuuuucked. These are the Illyrians! They’re friendly and chill. Archer asks them for their warp coil, and they’re like “uh no, without that it’ll take us 3 years to get back home”. Okay, that’s off limits then :)
T’Pol risks her life to get some Trellium D, then crushes is up and injects it into herself. What in the fuck is this episode? Why is it like this? Why did they decide it was supposed to be like this? I thought for a second that her disease was getting out of hand, remember she does still have Vulcan AIDs, but no, it’s a drug metaphor. What the fuck?!
Archer has a conversation with Phlox. It’s well framed and dark, but like… Archer is like “I’m about to cross a line. One I never wanted to cross. But I have to, if the mission is to succeed.” OH, JUST NOW? YOU’VE BEEN DOING THIS ALL FUCKING SEASON, WHY STOP NOW?!
“In response to Archer saying (later in the scene) that a line he intended to cross would probably not be the last one, Phlox replied, “Sometimes you have to draw a line… sometimes you have to step over one… ethics are not the only consideration,” instead of merely responding, as he does in the final version of the scene, “Probably not.””
FUCKING CHRIST.
Archer makes his plan clear. He’s going to steal the Illyrians warp coil. What the fuck?
Back in the Council, we learn of their benefactor, the Female Changeli- I’m sorry, the Female Sphere Builder. She’s been guiding them and helping them, and admits to helping the Reptilians and Insectoids go back in the past to kill all Humans. But she was just doing it so that the council would stay stable, cause they were going to leave the council if they can’t do a genocide, she just wanted to help :) They CLEARLY do not trust her.
T’Pol confronts Archer about his plan. She even QUOTES THE QUOTE I OFTEN QUOTE TO MAKE FUN OF HIM. But it turns out, she’s only getting emotional and angry about it BECAUSE SHE’S A FUCKING DRUG ADDICT AND ISN’T IN HER RIGHT MIND, NOT BECAUSE IT’S ACTUALLY WRONG TO DO. After this, she relents and goes to the doctor to get help for her drug habits.
This is bullshit and terrible in a way that most bad Trek isn’t. It’s really, REALLY rough. Like, okay… this isn’t bad on paper? Some of this could be handled well. The crew having to do evil things but then realizing in the end that they can go the higher route or something, but we KNOW that’s not how this is going to end. And then the drug stuff? She could be out of her mind because of her Vulcan AIDs, or from residual Trellium poisoning, not because of the ACTUAL reason she gives, which is “I was finally able to access emotions and it became addicting”. THAT’S NOT HOW VULCANS WORK. Also it’s implied it’s because she wanted to fuck Trip more. That is SO UPSETTING TO ME I WANT TO FUCKING VOMIT.
This is just reminding me of how they fucked up the Equinox storyline. They realize shit is evil, Archer is admitting he’s doing evil, and it’s not framed heroically. But it doesn’t actually handle it well, because of the way the characters handle it. This is not going to dwell on them, their hypocrisy doesn’t effect them, they will get over it next week. When Sisko did this, he had to repeat to himself over and over “I can get over this” BECAUSE HE COULDN’T. AND THEN HE NEVER DID ANYTHING LIKE IT AGAIN, BECAUSE IT WAS A ONE TIME I HAVE TO DO THIS THING. ARCHER’S BEEN DOING THIS ALL FUCKING SEASON WITH NO PROBLEMS.
Anyways they steal the fucking warp coil and strand the Illyrians 3 years from home in a region of space with dangerous anomalies that kills 90% of the people who enter it.
This fucking sucked.
This episode sucked SO BAD that we decided to watch movies instead. See you next week for the end of Season 3. Thank god.