Enterprise decides to step up its defences, because of a run-in with some mysterious aliens.
There’s been something missing from a lot of the plots so far in this show. I can’t quite pin it down, but there’s a lack of interesting stakes, or perhaps its just a lack of reaction to the stakes. The situation here has a fair bit of potential drama, with mysterious aliens threatening them, but the way it all plays out serves to undermine that. There’s a fairly good tense action scene towards the end as they test the new equipment, but it’s undermined by the worst outbreak of technobabble in Enterprise yet.
The B-plot was also a problem. After a couple of moments I did come to enjoy the scene with Reed’s parents, who prove that British-ness is alive and well in the 22nd century. A lot of the rest of that plotline was excruciating, but I did enjoy that it managed to find a ‘science fiction’ answer through Phlox.
Callbacks: The design of the subspace relays, which harks back to to the Nomad probe of *The Changeling*. And the first ‘phase-modulated’ weapons, the first phasers.
649 down, 88 to go.