Brikar

1x01/02 "Broken Bow" - Captain Jonathan Archer of the Enterprise NX-01 undertakes his first mission, to return a wounded Klingon carrying vital intelligence back to his people. Archer paces some more so we know how serious he is. As a pilot episode, this one's pretty decent. It has trouble, of course - firstly being that the cast is almost uniformly awful. It also suffers from some not very prequel-like aspects, and some ideas that are just plain stupid, such as the decon chamber rub-down scene. The flashbacks to Archer's childhood are clumsy and not particularly compelling or useful in any fashion. Still, it has a couple of well-made action sequences and some cool special effects. The thing is that for all its flaws, it does show a lot of promise. But we all know how that turned out, right?

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Cymro

The decon scene was Braga being sssssensual. I read a quote somewhere from him where he said he liked doing things like that to piss off prudish fans.

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"Let me tell you something about humans, nephew: They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working.

"But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those friendly, intelligent, wonderful people...will become as nasty and as violent as the most blood-thirsty klingon."

Bean

I'd like to make one request. For every episode you review, I would like you to include the phrase "Archer paces some more so we know how serious he is."

I promise, you won't find a single episode for which that phrase doesn't apply.

__________________
"I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing."

--James T. Kirk

Brikar

A laudable goal to be sure, but there are better ways to do it than this idiotic concept.

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"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Cymro

That's always been his problem. He has plenty of things he wants to put on screen , but very rarely can he find an elegant way of doing it.

__________________
"Let me tell you something about humans, nephew: They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working.

"But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those friendly, intelligent, wonderful people...will become as nasty and as violent as the most blood-thirsty klingon."

Brikar

1x03 "Fight or Flight" - The Enterprise finds a ship whose crew has been slaughtered and is now being drained of their bodily fluids, while Hoshi struggles to decide whether to stay aboard. Archer gets testy during dinner so we know how serious he is. There are a lot of good ideas floating around in this one: that the Enterprise was rushed into service and therefore has some technical issues, protocols about boarding other ships uninvited, the amount of work that goes into trying to communicate with a new species for the first time, that the Enterprise is not a particularly powerful ship... If it weren't for the mind-numbingly aggravating scenes of Hoshi having a crisis of confidence, this is a pretty solid episode. The climactic scene where she must rely on her own talents instead of the universal translator is fine on paper, but in execution takes forever. If I had been the alien on the viewscreen, I would have given up the Enterprise to its fate long before this guy did. I did really like the mess hall scene between Trip and Phlox, however.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Brikar

1x04 "Strange New World" - Archer disregards basic and reasonable security precautions to send a survey team down to an unknown planet, where the team is infected by an alien spore which causes them to hallucinate and become paranoid. Archer pouts to show us how serious he is. This episode is nearly ruined by Archer's absurd behavior. He gleefully belittles T'Pol's suggestion that they study the planet further before sending down a team, and then doesn't show the slightest bit of remorse when that decision nearly kills his entire team. What this episode does have is the earliest indications that Connor Trinneer is by far the best actor in this whole bunch. But the all the problems with the script could have been avoided by making Archer less of an asshole, and making the alien pollen more insidious. He talks a lot about Starfleet training and being prepared, but he stumbles like an arrogant ass into this situation that his training should have taught him how to avoid.

1x05 "Unexpected" - Trip visits an alien ship to help them repair their warp drive and comes back pregnant. Archer orders him to take a nap so we know how serious he is. .......Two words: Wrist nipples. Three more words: Fuck. This. Shit. This is just a completely dumb episode from start to finish. It's far too early in this series for them to be doing a comedy episode, and a terrible one at that. The only reason any of the gags in this episode works is, again, Connor Trinneer. His delivery is occasionally chuckle-worthy, but even his fine performance can't save this bad script. An encounter with the Klingons is wasted, and hey, thanks for introducing the holodeck two hundred years early, guys!

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Brikar

1x06 "Terra Nova" - The Enterprise is assigned to investigate Earth's lost Terra Nova colony. Reed eats cave bugs to show us how serious he is. Meh. Not bad; one or two cool action sequences. Archer doesn't quite act like a total dick in this one, and it does have a bit more of a 'prequel' feel to it, investigating a lost colony and so on. But there's nothing particularly great about it, either. Just a very middle-of-the-road action-adventure episode.

1x07 "The Andorian Incident" - Archer decides to barge in on a Vulcan monastery, only to discover that the monks are being held hostage by an Andorian military unit. Shran beats the shit out of Archer to show us how serious he is. Seriously, I don't know what the writers of this show were thinking when they tried to hide the fact that Archer is a complete asshole behind the tissue-thin justification of "we didn't come out here to bla bla bla." More like, "we didn't come out here to be nice to people." Seriously, who the fuck thinks it's okay to just bust in on a monastery like this? The only thing that saves this episode is Jeffrey Combs' performance as Shran. His forceful temper is a lot of fun.

1x08 "Breaking the Ice" - The Enterprise crew investigates a comet, while T'Pol deals with her hesitance to marry Koss. Archer answers questions from an elementary school to show us how serious he is. God, this episode is just so freaking boring. It takes forever for anything even remotely interesting to happen, and even then it's just a brief scene in which T'Pol asks Tucker for advice about marrying Koss. It's a nice scene between the two, hinting at their future romance in seasons three and four (though I doubt this was done on purpose).

1x09 "Civilization" - Archer disregards protocol once again to visit a pre-warp civilization only to discover that alien technology is making some of the locals sick. Archer belittles T'Pol to show us how serious he is. There are some decent action sequences, and the difficulties with the universal translator are a nice idea. Lip service is paid to the idea that we shouldn't be making contact with less advanced races, but then it's dropped in favor of the action-adventure plot and never brought up again.

1x10 "Fortunate Son" - The Enterprise is ordered to assist a human freighter under attack from Nausicaan pirates, but the freighter crew is suspicious of Starfleet officers. Mayweather tries to act to show us how serious he is. A lot of potential in this episode; the Boomers are a pretty good idea, as are bringing back the Nausicaans... problem is, the Nausicaans aren't characterized like they were in previous shows at all. The way they're written and portrayed here, they could be anyone, and that wastes their appearance entirely. To make matters worse, this episode focuses on Mayweather, played by Anthony Montgomery who is a just plain godawful actor. His big emotional speech at the end is just plain painful.

1x11 "Cold Front" - While the Enterprise investigates a stellar nursery, Silik infiltrates the ship and Crewman Daniels reveals to Archer that he's from the future. Archer paces to show us how serious he is. This episode is fun, a cool installment before the Temporal Cold War becomes total nonsense and is eventually abandoned entirely. The twist that Silik actually saves the ship is pretty cool, one that I wouldn't have expected from these writers, who seem to lack subtlety in every way possible.

1x12 "Silent Enemy" - The Enterprise is stalked and then attacked by mysterious aliens in a powerful vessel. Archer tucks tail and runs home to show us how serious he is. This one's pretty decent, too. It has some nice special effects, good storyline, and an unusually energetic musical score. The b-plot involving Hoshi trying to figure out Reed's favorite food is kind of stupid, but whatever, it's far less annoying than it could have been.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Arik

Terra Nova actually has my favorite "Archer" moment. He storms off the bridge (to show us how serious he is), and he says something to the effect of "If we can't make first contact with a bunch of humans, we have no right being out here".

He's right, of course. Which is also rare for the series.

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Bean

I'm loving the recurring theme of the seriousness examples in every episode..

__________________
"I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing."

--James T. Kirk