Category: Trekathon

Archer makes an alliance with some of the Xindi. Like the previous episode, there’s a lot going on. Unlike the previous episode it just didn’t quite hang together as well. The major plot is nicely advanced, with Mulder-Xindi convincing Scully-Xindi to believe (maybe I should watch the X-Files next, hmmm…). But beyond Degra’s growth and…

Enterprise tries to repair damage, as some of the Xindi begin to doubt. Wow, a lot happened. Let’s take it one at a time. First, the Xindi are looking a lot more interesting now, with a bit more internal dissent and conflict. A lot better than I feared from their first appearance. Second, the T’Pol…

Enterprise finds the Xindi weapon, and Archer goes on a suicide mission to destroy it. Another two-part episode, another difficult write-up. Enterprise’s achilles heel has been the time travel plots. I think the original motivation was to give the writers some degrees of freedom relative to the established ‘future history’. There are some good ideas…

Archer goes a little buggy, and the crew re-enacts *Crimson Tide*. Another one of those great stand-by episodes – the Captain might have gone nuts, and the crew has to decide what side their on. This one strained its credibility a little, particularly given the previous emphasis on decontamination for even small things – hard…

Enterprise passes through a nebula where all the Humans need to be put into a coma for the passage. Even though I picked the twist in this episode pretty early on, it was concealed well enough that I began to doubt my conclusion right up to the end of the episode. Nicely done – just…

Enterprise retrieves a strange alien from a large anomaly. In one sense the ‘main’ plot of this episode was a shaggy dog tale – the only important bit was the last five seconds, where we get a sense that the people building the spheres are involved with the Xindi. Well, we did kinda know that…

Archer interrogates the Xindi mastermind. I was disappointed about the caution the episode took in the end, it would have been nice to keep us in suspense (at least a little) about what was going on, rather than reveal the elaborate set up. Gee, they really had to work for it back before the holodeck…

The Andorians show up to help the mission. So I think this plot development is normally called the ‘deus ex shran’. Forgiven, because Shran is the best recurring guest star this show has developed so far. Also, things turn out to be more complicated than they first appear. There’s some first rate flirting between Reed…

Enterprise is taken over by religious terrorists. Gee, I wonder what possible real world parallels they were trying to draw… Although if you missed the moral, clearly you stopped the episode a few minutes too early, as the last scene wielded a true sledgehammer of subtlety. The mechanics were mostly pretty good. Often the problem…

Archer and T’Pol travel back to Earth 2004 to stop a Xindi bioweapon plot. This makes surprisingly little use of the time period. T’Pol’s moralising asides are annoying, overly arch, and to be frank out of character for her. I doubt she honestly sees much difference between 2004 and 2154. It was good that they…