LizstarTrek - Enterprise Season 3 episodes 18-24

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.

Okay its next week. Let’s get this over with.

The Forgotten - ENT 3/10

18 people died over the nonsense that happened in the last two episodes. The episode REALLY hammers this in. You know, inbetween THIS.

T’Pol being a drug addict is not a thing that’ll that’ll be ending any time soon. She’s just… emotional now. Well, she wasn’t really acting like a Vulcan anyway.

Enterprise meets up with Degra and the Arboreal council member who’s backing Archer. They arranged for Archer to be returned to his ship, and want him to prove that he can time travel. That’s gonna be… hard, but he offers to show them proof if they come aboard his ship.

You know, I was told something about this season before I watched it. They described it as “the most submarine coded season of Star Trek”. I was looking forward to that. A crummy ship in a dangerous area where they can only kinda pop out occasionally and gotta patch up holes. But now that we’re here, uh, it sucks. They use it to justify straight up killing hte Illyrians, and Tucker’s reaction to this is to not sleep for 2 days as he gets crabbier and crabbier. I’m not sure why I was ever looking forward to that to begin with.

Seth Macfarlane has a cameo in this. He says two sentences to Trip and looks about as excited to talk to him as I would be.

Trip meets with Degra and yells at him about how his weapon blew up Florida. And also Cuba, Venezuala, prolly some of Jamaica… But those don’t matter. Only Florida matters, cause that’s ‘Murica. This’d be like if 9/11 happened and also a bunch of other countries got attacked, but everything was treated exactly the same. I fucking HATE how America-centric this show is.

There’s a plasma leak, and an eepy Tucker needs to go out with Reed to fix it. God, imagine if we had ANY ENGINEERS THAT AREN’T TRIP who could help him?! Well we did, one of them died, we had never seen her before, and Trip has been spending the episode complaining about needing to write to her parents.

Despite all of Trip’s being a shithead, and all of the lack of evidence Archer is giving (just show him the fucking future shit that Daniels left), Degra is throwing his hat in with the Humans, and wants to help them. Though when a Reptilian warship shows up to finish the job extrajudicially, he’s not exactly ready or willing to join the Humans and attack the Reptilians… at first, but just a LITTLE convincing and he joins them to fight. Good thing Degra’s one of the good one- oh, he went WAY too far and just straight up KILLED those Reptilians. Welp, whatever, they would have hurt our alliance, so it’s GOOD that they died!

Degra convinces Archer go to in front of the council and show his evidence (what fucking evidence?!), but it’ll take three days via a subspace corridor, which some kind of beings use as hunting grounds. I’m sure that won’t be a problem.

Trip finally writes that letter to the dead crewman’s parents. He makes it about himself and his dead sister. I am going to become the joker.

E² - ENT 6/10

The episode starts with Old T’Pol with Land of Confusion-style makeup talking to some Vulcan like “we could not stop the 7 million people from dying, so you must find Jonathan Archer”. Interesting.

As they approach the corridor, they are approached by another Starfleet ship. It’s Enterprise, looking EXTREMELY shitty and awful. They tell Archer to hold back and not enter the nebula… they come over and the Vulcan guy introduces himself as Lorian. He tells a story, which is shown in like 5FPS shitty cam footage. Why?? I dunno. Anyways when Enterprise goes through the corridor, it’ll send them back 120 years. In the past, they have a plan, to stop the first Xindi attack. They obviously failed, and now they want to help team up to stop the second.

This is YET ANOTHER case of this show just taking a previous episode I like, and almost certainly doing it worse. This is just the DS9 episode where they go down to a planet with time shit, and find their descendants. The writer actually had an original plan of it being the Columbia, Enterprise’s sister ship, who got sent back instead, but was overruled by executives who were like “eh, it’s been long enough since DS9 aired”. I don’t like THAT, but I don’t mind it that much so far. And I love this kind of “AU who pares off with who” storyline.

You know the Hot Lady Marine that we see every now and then? Her name is Amanda, and Phlox apparently shacks up with her. Phlox can GET IT. Phlox won Enterprise, hell yeah.

Aaaand the twist, The Future Enteprise is actually evil. Lorian makes plans to steal some Enterprise tech so that they can go and meet the Xindi and stop them. I was thinking they’d do this so that they can justify their own existence and cause themselves to exist, like the DS9 episode, but no, they’re just kinda doing it because they think this is the best chance of stopping the Xindi. That’s a LOT less interesting.

Also, it’s bad and evil that they’re stealing engineering hardware. Piracy is bad again!

Lorian is stopped. His crew won’t let him just KILL the others when he wants to. In jail, he explains why he did what he “had to do”. Because he’s guilty he couldn’t stop the weapon. Dog, SO MANY people could have stopped this weapon, there’s time travel in this storyline.

Old T’Pol tells Young T’Pol the best way to handle her emotions. Use Trip as a fucktoy to get all the emotions out. I am only BARELY exaggerating.

Shout outs to Twinborne in my chat for this nonsense.

The Enterprises work together, and they basically tow the Current Enterprise out of the corridor, while sacrificing themselves. The Future Enterprise’s fate is not shown, but the Current Enterprise made it through, into the right century. That problem solved itself I guess.

Enteprise meets with Degra, the end. At least this episode shows Phlox has the most game on Enterprise.

The Council - ENT 7.5/10

The episode starts with a council of Sphere Builders yelling at each other about KILLING ALL HUMANS, floating in a white void. Damn bitch, y’all live like this? No wonder you wanna enter the Beta Quadrant.

Hoshi and Archer go to the council. Holy SHIT, Hoshi gets to DO SOMETHING? MEanwhile, T’Pol, Mayweather, Reed, and a Redshirt are doing…. SOMETHING at a sphere. Degra and Archer are nearly stopped by Dolim, the Reptilian councilmember, but they make through after all.

REALLY good Archer, amazing diplomacy skills. You start your talking before the council to make your case that they’re being lied to by going “You killed 7 million Humans, I fucking hate you”. Very good.

VERY American worldview, frankly.

It doesn’t go well. What a fucking surprise. The Reptilians and the Insectoids are NEVER going to side with the Humans, but maybe the Aquatics will. They need to focus on convincing them, and they respond best to hard visual evidence. Meanwhile, the Sphere Builder woman, or “The Guardian” as they call her, is behind the Reptilian telling him to make sure the weapon launches so that the Reptilians rule over a unified Xindi empire. Yeah, an empire of One species.

Meanwhile, the B team are in a Sphere, prolly intending to get something that proves their case. The Red Shirt is waving his death flags all over the fuckin’ place. Oh shit he died, no way.

After showing the dead Sphere Builder, the council is a liiiittle more reticent to learning more. And then, they get their three votes to postpone the launching of the weapon… Not the Aquatics! The Reptilians! Glad they’re finally coming around :D Dolim comes around to have a peaceful meeting with Degra- oh, nope.

RIP Degra.

Obviously this pissed off EVERYONE on the council, except the Insectoids, who are ontologically evil. I do kinda wish it was JUST one group, the Reptilian leader and his yesmen, pushing for this after all the evidence. The Insectoids and Reptilians leave the council, launch the weapon, and they can’t stop it as it leaves to Earth. But not before stealing THE FEMALE (Hoshi). Oh no! Time for I AM LOCUTUS OF THE REPTILIANS, RESISTANCE IS- no, prolly not.

Pacing is a little off but pretty alright actually.

Countdown - ENT 6/10

We start with Hoshi being tied to a chair and tortured. They intend to use her to hack the code so they can activate The Weapon. Poor fucking Hoshi. FINALLY taken out of mothballs just to be tortured.

Everyone on Enterprise is like “I sure with Hoshi was here to help us with this thing”. Y’all made do without her this entire fucking season, why is it a problem now?

They need the Aquatics help to go after The Weapon, but the Aquatics are fine with being neutral in this new civil war. Archer tries to diplomacy them to their side, but is VERY bad at diplomacy, so instead he says they know how to disable the Spheres, and will teach them if they help him. They cannot do that. So now Trip and T’Pol need to find out how to shut down the Spheres. Whoops.

The Aquatics agree. Now, after eight months in the Expanse, it’s time to leave and stop that weapon. The battle begins. The aquatics smuggle Enterprise in a giant carrier, which is kinda neat, and then there’s a big battle. Even the MACO get their chance to FINALLY do SOMETHING. They board a Xindi vessel to try and save Hoshi and stop the weapon from launching. This looking VERY good for our heroes.

The Sphere Builders use the spheres to create MASSIVE anomalies that destroy a lot of the attacking fleet. Shit Gets Bad real fast. The giant Aquatic ship falls apart, kinda sad. And then the MACO struggle to survive against the Reptilians, and the leader is killed in action, after everyone else is teleported out. They can’t stop them. The weapon is launched.

Also the Reptilians betray the Insectoids, who are like “Yo actually that anomaly shows the Guardians DID build the spheres”. Oh no, the leopards!

Plans are made to chase it and send a team inside to stop it. Hoshi is EXTREMELY injured, and moving her might kill her, but Archer demands she be moved anyway. Come on, man. Also, the rest of Enterprise head to a Sphere to blow it up, which should blow up the entirety of them.

Eh, it’s okay.

Zero Hour - ENT 6/10

This is the FINAL episode where Brennan and Braga will be writing…. until the VERY end of the series. We’re almost free of them. But their shadow remains.

We have to watch the Reptilian eat some mice. Everyone hated that. I guess they’re Snake People now.

Wow, what a surprise, Archer is REALLY handling the Hoshi thing wrong. She’s not sure where she is, because she has BRAIN DAMAGE, and he’s yelling at her and shaking her to JUST STOP BEING HYSTERICAL, WOMAN. Bitches just need a bit of Percusive Maintenence. He also intends to TAKE HER BACK ONTO THE WEAPON. Dude.

Daniels shows up one more time to tell Archer he’s The Very Special Boy who needs to live so the Federation can happen, so just sacrifice one of the others, Reed or Hoshi, they aren’t important. The more this guy shows up the more I hate him.

HE’S HERE! The Andorians are here to help hold the Reptilians off so that Archer can sneak on board. God, I love Shran. Thanks for being the only good part of Enterprise, Shran. “AND TELL ARCHER WE’RE NOT EVEN ANYMORE. HE OWES ME.” God, you’re great.

We have two tense moments here. Archer is hacking into the weapon from the inside, using Hoshi’s plans, while Enterprise is sitting in intense radiation and trying to blow up a sphere while the Builders try to stop them. Shit just keeps getting worse and worse. Hoshi loses her notes, people continue to die.

Christ, the special effects are horrifying.

They disable the weapon, but Archer stays behind to blow it up. He HAS to scratch his savior complex!! But I’m sure it’s important, because this raging war criminal is the ONLY person from this time period that actually matters.

Yes I am still hung up on that.

Well, we NEED Archer to stay behind so that we can get one last one on one battle! He and Dolim have an epic battle with the typical “holding him over the edge and trying to push him over” thing. But Archer wins, blowing him the fuck up. IT’s gruesome.

Wow, they really went for it, huh? This looks MEATY.

Are you fucking kidding me

T’Pol FINALLY tells Trip her age, because he’s insufferable and still on this. This series has a tone problem. Everyone else makes it back to tell them the weapon is destroyed, but Archer didn’t make it.

The Xindi transport the Enterprise to earth, and then leave. And they are literally never seen again, ever. Neither are the Sphere Builders. Star Trek Online does not count.

Enterprise returns to Earth and hears no response. They go down, and are attacked by fucking P52s. Somewhere, Archer wakes up in a fucking war tent, as NAZIS COME AROUND HIM, ONE OF THEM BEING AN ALIEN.

What the fuck.

This was legit Berman’s last laugh. He had no plans, and no goals. He knew he wasn’t going to work on season 4’s writing. So he just put up nazis and went “GOOD LUCK!” There are theories that it was a ploy to make it so that if the network cancelled Enterprise, it’d make people yell SO LOUDLY that “YOU CAN’T JUST END WITH A FUCKING NAZI CLIFFHANGER” that it’d make exec’s lives miserable. The one good thing Berman ever did, try to make Exec’s lives miserable.

It’s still really fucking stupid though.

This season legit sucked. It’s the worst. At least it’s pretty much entirely skippable? The FIRST season in the best season somehow so far, how the FUCK did that happened? I hear from a lot of people I trust, season 4 gets actually good. So… WE’LL FUCKING SEE.

Gonna take a 2 or 3 week break for GDQ. Enterprise returns then.