Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

  • Trekathon 723: Kir’Shara (3) (ENT)

    The Vulcan High Command launches an attack on Andoria. With the exception of administrator V’Las, I thought this worked very well as the reconciliation between TOS and later Vulcans and the Vulcans of Enterprise. V’Las, though, just goes too far over the edge. Maybe that’s meant to be a hint to his affiliations, but he…

  • Trekathon 722: Awakening (2) (ENT)

    Archer becomes the Vulcan Martin Luther. Well, it’s a good thing this appears to be the ‘Vulcan reset button’ story. Because if it wasn’t, I’d be pretty annoyed by the portrayal of the high command. They simply are not acting like the Vulcans we know from later series. Apart from being plainly based on the…

  • Trekathon 721: The Forge (1) (ENT)

    Vulcan terrorists blow up the Earth embassy. The portrayal of Vulcans in Enterprise has been controversial. They are, with no question, not the Vulcans of later series – they don’t act the same, or have the same beliefs. Personally I’ve been happy to let that be, on the basis that the writers were going somewhere…

  • Trekathon 720: The Augments (3) (ENT)

    Archer has to stop the augments before they destroy a Klingon world. In the great debate of nature versus nurture, this episode comes down relatively solidly on the side of nature. We’re told that the augments are this aggressive and dangerous because of their genes, rather than their upbringing. I would have preferred a bit…

  • Trekathon 719: Cold Station 12 (2) (ENT)

    The Augments raid a research station to retrieve their frozen embryo siblings. The one thing harder to write about than a two-part episode: the dread three-parter. Most of what is interesting or good, or bad, or strange, was set up in the previous episode. And nothing is really resolved here. At this point I’m actually…

  • Trekathon 718: Borderland (1) (ENT)

    Enterprise has to track down a group of augmented humans who attacked a Klingon ship. It’s comforting to be back into plots that feel a lot more like Star Trek. As annoying as the Klingons can be, you know where you stand with them. Plus it helps to have a great guest star, and Brent…

  • Trekathon 717: Home (ENT)

    Everyone goes home. Except Phlox. Another of the ‘anthology’ episodes that Enterprise seems to enjoy so much. The best was Archer trying to deal with his actions – I like seeing the psychological consequences on the crew, it grounds the show in reality. It’s handled reasonably well, even with the gratuitous rock climbing sequence. The…

  • Trekathon 716: Storm Front (2) (ENT)

    Archer defeats the Space Nazis. A bad plot that was resolved about as well as could be hoped. The plot runs all over the place for not much result, such as the Trip subplot – a lot of effort, no real storytelling. The most ambitious bit was the opening newsreel, but that fell pretty flat.…

  • Trekathon 715: Storm Front (1) (ENT)

    It’s Archer versus the Space Nazis (™). To be honest, it wasn’t the gigantic pile of fail I was expecting. There are some nice touches – Nazis in the US is pretty rare, evidenced by this being one of the few times that I’ve ever seen the ‘White House with swastikas’ image here. The gangsters…

  • Trekathon Season Review: Enterprise, Season 3

    Star Trek finally tries the ‘serial story’ thing without reserve. There are two big problems with the Xindi arc. Firstly, it comes out of nowhere. By that, I mean that we’ve never heard of this species before, don’t know anything about them. Wouldn’t it have made a lot more sense to use Romulans, or some…