Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

Better than I expected. A lot better, really. Enterprise is the one Trek series that I’d never spent much time on, and what I’d heard at the time it was on TV wasn’t good. So my expectations were set pretty low. But the show has generally been good, certainly a lot better than the last…

Enterprise blows up a planet. An episode of two halves. Fortunately two halves of reasonable strength for a change. The first part is the crew dealing with a terrible tragedy they think they’ve caused. T’Pol’s lack of understanding comes across as a bit artificial, but we do feel that Archer is genuinely upset about what’s…

The Captain of the Enterprise goes on vacation on Risa. [Well, wasn’t so bad last time](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2010/04/trekathon-174-captains-holiday-tng/). A straight up omnibus show, with no major plot. It’s a mixed bag – Trip and Tucker turn out to be really sleazy, and pay the price for it. Hoshi picks up a foreign tongue. And Archer gets into…

Trip and Archer are trapped in a desert civil war. So, apparently Trip and Archer did a very very bad survival course. Because Rule 1 of desert survival is very simple: do not leave your vehicle. OK, fine, there was an attack going on – but you could have waited it out a few hundred…

Enterprise ferries a Vulcan ambassador home. One of the struggles Enterprise has had this season is the Vulcan plots. There’s a great idea there – what was it like before the Vulcans were the firm allies of Earth – but the implementation so far has left something to be desired. There was a great moment…

A strange goopy alien sneaks on board. To summarise the episode: T’Pol is kind of a jerk to Hoshi, Hoshi is a bit uncertain of herself. Most of the rest are stuck to a wall. Hoshi and T’Pol work together and the day is saved. It’s flat and relatively dull writing, but enlivened by what…

Star Trek Masterpiece Theatre presents: The WW2 Japanese Internship Camps. In case you couldn’t guess, this is one of those episodes where they didn’t exactly go for subtlety in hiding their theme – it was even namechecked at one point. That doesn’t necessarily make for a bad episode, but it doesn’t help. The content was…

Enterprise finds a haunted ship. I was worried about yet another ghost story, and so I was quite relieved when it went in a different direction. But that different direction doesn’t supply enough plot to fill an episode, so there’s far too long a stretch to the main plot elements. And then the reveal happens…

No, not the Ferengi. Anything but that. Couldn’t we find a way to include Lwaxana Troi instead? Things this episode did wrong: * Had Ferengi at all. Seriously, it conflicts with the timeline, and I don’t like them. * Forgot that torpedoes weigh quite a lot, and so probably can’t be easily pushed by a…

Some of the crew go hunting with some aliens. Bleh. Dull and predictable. It’s established so early on that the aliens are hunting something a bit more sentient than they’re letting on that it’s mysterious. The siren that appears to Archer doesn’t so much seduce as make us question her judgment. And the final resolution…