I want to be spoiled !!

[LTBasker]

BritCit, trust me... we aren't being spoiled. I won't say any spoilers but I will tell ya this, don't have high expectations of T'Pol being like Lt. Saavik in the Trek movies because well, rather poor acting on Jolene Blalock's part, IMO. (That wouldn't count as a spoiler would it?)

VT: Just wanted to let you know I lost that Bajoran Solar Sailor I was getting for trade. Didn't make it in time to get it...

[britcit3]

T'Pol: the fact that she seems to have stolen Jeri Ryans wardrobe does earn her big brownie points with me.

So go on then, what happenned ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????

BC3

[LTBasker]

Alot of continuity and some almost-nudity

[JediTricks]

I wrote my "opinions" part and have been using it as a generic response to the show. I'll post a synopsis first:

It's 90 years after the events of "First Contact" where Cochrane made his historic flight, and many humans apparently feel held back by the Vulcans both in terms of diplomacy with the rest of the galaxy and with the development of warp speed and other technology. This gives a new spin on McCoy's hard-headed thinking towards Spock in TOS. Also another throw-back to McCoy's way of thinking is the pointing out that transporters are just now being tested for human use, and nobody wants to use them. Anyway, a Klingon has crashed on Earth and is chased down by creepy sand-skinned baddies called the Sauurin. The Klingon blows them up, but since he doesn't speak english, he's shot by a Human with a plasma shotgun (I kid you not) who doesn't know what the evil-looking alien is doing or saying. Captain Archer is called to Starfleet medical where he finds a few Admirals and some Vulcans discussing the Klingon, who's being worked on by Dr Phlox. The Vulcans want to respect the honor of death from battle the Klingon society respects, but Archer finds out that the Klingon may not die at all, but merely may need further medical attention. Archer clashes with the Vulcans, especially the female named T'pol. The Vulcans don't want Archer and Starfleet to be the ones delivering the Klingon back to Quo'nos ("Kronos", the Klingon homeworld), but Starfleet wants to get out there and meet new folks, so after a scene where Archer brings in a communications officer (thus leading the viewer to imagine the other "gathering" he must do to pull this mission off in the 3 days he has), Archer is stuck with the Vulcan he most cheesed off as his science officer, and of course, she's hot to look at but isn't thrilled to be there. The Enterprise NX-01 is going out for it's first run, and the ship uses new warp engines that Capt Archer's dad designed and died before seeing used "because of the Vulcans." On the way to the Klingon homeworld, Klaang (the Klingon courier our heroes are returning to his homeworld) is stolen away by the Saurrin baddies who can go invisible when they shut the power down on the whole ship. However, thanks to luck and a worthless translator, we believe he MAY have visited a planet called Rigel 10 before hitting Earth, which is confirmed by T'pol who wasn't allowed to share this info originally with the humans. They also killed one of the enemy saurrins, who Dr Phlox says has been manipulated to have enhancements that are not natural.

Getting to the planet, a small away team comprised of the first officer, the captain, the Vulcan, the young ensign helmsman, the armory officer, and the communications officer, heads down to what can only be guessed is the ONLY city on the planet, a small snowy little dirty dump. During this, we see Klaang being interrogated by the evil Saurrins who find out that he knows little and was carrying nothing, even though he was the courier who met with one of their enemies, they then send some guys to intercept Archer and crew. We also meet some "time distortion room" type thing where a mysterious shadowy figure gives orders to the Saurrin. Back to the crew, after a split-up which leads to some goofiness, T'pol pointing out how the human desire to put their nose into everything and impose their values on everybody is not always the right thing to do, and some alien sex-club/prostitution scene, Archer is found by some Saurrins and a "sexy lady" who confronts him about the Klingon and the mission and what he knows yadda yadda, then kisses him and morphs into a Saurrin, but explains how she's not a baddie and how she was trying to help the infighting Klingon factions who are being manipulated from an unknown force from the future involved in a "Temporal Cold War" - this force is also giving the other Saurrins a leg-up in evolution and using them as puppets. Obviously, the Saurrins don't want this info getting out. Then they're ambushed, and go to escape to their shuttle pod but the good-guy Saurrin chick gets killed. The rest of our heroes get back to the shuttle where there are more baddies shooting at them, and when T'pol is knocked down by an escaping Saurrin ship's exhaust leaving her unable to get to the shuttle pod, Archer goes back and saves her, but gets shot in the leg. She drags the capt to the shuttle and they get out of there, and on their way back to the ship, T'pol announces that she's the next-highest ranking officer and is taking command of the Enterprise, which doesn't set well with everybody.

When the crew gets back to the ship, we learn that the first officer and T'pol had come into contact with a spore which is bad, so they both go into the decontamination chamber where they strip down to their undies while the doctor passes lotion to them to kill the spore. While they're rubbing their barely-clothed bodies down in graphic detail, they discuss what the next move should be, T'pol wants to go back to Earth in failure, but first officer wants to track the Saurrin ship, there's strife and conflict and a touch of sexual tension, and when Archer comes to, he learns that they're following the Saurrin ship. Eventually, they find the base of these Saurrins and fly into a gas giant, capture an enemy ship, Archer and first officer trojan horse over to the base with 2 pieces of new tech -- a device which demagnatizes any hull within 2 km or something (which is important since the base is made of little pods all magnetized together), and new "phase pistols" which have 2 settings - stun and kill. While the Enterprise - with T'pol in command - is waiting for Archer to return and is hiding in a different level of the atmosphere of the gas giant planet, the ship is being homed in upon by the missiles of the enemy and has to move, which means Archer won't be able to find them. Apparently, the ship doesn't even have shields. So they find Klaang alive thanks to a surprisingly accurate tricorder, they get into a firefight, Archer sends Klaang and First Officer along while he sets the demag charge, and when it goes off, all chaos lets loose and Archer can't get to the pod, so he uses his communicator to tell First Officer to take off, drop off the Klingon, and come back for him. When First Officer and Klaang get back to the Ent, the FO and T'pol again clash on the nature of the mission, T'pol wants to split and thinks that Archer wasn't interested in being saved, he just wanted to make sure that FO and Klaang got away, but FO disagrees. While this is going on, Archer finds the "Time Room" and battles the head Saurrin baddie, they fight, Archer gets away, and the Ent ends up having to use the transporter to save him, something that's never been tested before. The transport goes ridiculously smoothly and the Ent gets away. Finally, they deliver Klaang to the Klingon homeworld, and the Klingon higher ups take a sample of Klaang's blood, analyze it, and there's a piece of helix which contains data, data that the guy from the future didn't want the Klingons getting. With this mission complete, Archer gets new instructions that they don't head back to Earth, but they begin the "boldly go" mission. Archer, who still hasn't told anybody (as far as we know) about the whole Temporal Cold War issue, privately asks T'pol to stay on as the science officer, she agrees, and the show ends.




And now onto my opinions:

Well, as a Trekkie, I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. I dunno, it felt sorta pedestrian like it was trying its hardest to get as many audiences as possible to like it by being spread too thin.* The "technobabble-factor" was nowhere near as low as I was expecting, though it was almost all based on technobabble from TNG which made it at least solid technobabble* . The "nearly nude" scene with T'pol in the decon(tamination) chamber was really insulting, far beyond anything they pulled with 7 of 9 on Voyager. This really went over the top with the rubbing of lotion and thin shirt barely covering erect nipples, sure it was sexy, but is this the type of thing Rick Berman feels Trek has to resort to?

None of the scenes had much subtle impact IMO, it was like a brick being thrown through my TV screen that said "inspiring" or "danger!". Bakula wasn't bad, but he was basically just himself (or that "Dr. Sam Beckett" part of him), and the rest of the main cast was all over the map. The actress who played T'pol gave fine readings, when I closed my eyes, I heard her character, but when I looked at her, she went through her lines like a block of wood, barely even blinking. At one point in sickbay, she spent nearly a minute without changing her expression or looking in a different direction or even cocking her head - that's got to be fixed! Dr Phlox was like Neelix-squared, but since I never hated Neelix, it wasn't too bad for me (till we got to that awful CG-smile). The rest of the cast was sort of generic, but I think the whole thing has promise. The last half-hour really dropped the ball though IMO, this was a very standard Voyager ending, I hope they can think their way out of future eps better than this action-ending.

All in all, I found it was not really a prequel to The Original Series (TOS), but more like a prequel to The Next Generation (TNG) - lots of hope, lots of Okudagrams. I don't mind too much if they have to rewrite little pieces of Trek backstory to get this thing working, but I hope they try to be kind to the Trek legend.

One more note, while the credit sequence was visually interesting, the music they chose (some Rod Stewart sound-alike) just didn't work for me. I didn't hate it, and upon a 2nd run-through, I thought it was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but it didn't have that inspirational feeling that all the Star Trek shows' opening credit sequences had in one way or another. What's really weird is that this music was a huge departure for Trek, but the rest of the show's score felt like any ol' Voyager episode, totally uninspired.


Now, onto my thoughts about where it's going, which means some
POTENTIAL SPOILERS

I'm like 99% sure that the "futureguy" enemy is a Romulan. The temporal cold war is going to be an ongoing theme and I hope they have the smarts to give a few clues without giving the whole thing away.

The transporter was already used deus ex machina, that's a REALLY bad sign there. I hope they have the smarts to make the transporter have some friggin' PROBLEMS in the future.


The Klingons didn't seem to care jack about the humans, this was the wrong note to get off on there. By the end of the first season, there better be some serious Klingon/Human animosity going on!

[LTBasker]

The lotion rubbing scene, that should have never been thought of. The guy (forget his name) just rubs it on his bare skin while T'Pol is over there rubbing it under her shirt and on her chest and in her SHORTS for crying outloud! I mean, come on, if the guy only has to rub it on his exposed skin, and if he would be ok by doing just the exposed skin then T'Pol being full blooded Vulcan should've definitely known that it was not logical to put lotion in places it doesn' t need to be. That scene is incredibly lame and stupid from a Trek point of view which is it not what they are going for since the show is called Star Trek and not Star Nudes? 'course the scene fits with Jolene Bra-Unlocked considering when talking to on of my friends yesterday he said his brother got a magazine in the mail with some pictures of her that were pretty much the equivelant to PlayBoy. (Just what Berman was looking for, I guess)

Anyway, 'nuff of my hatred babbling toward that scene. (When it comes to a Star Trek, I put Trek before Sex. )

Well ya know they gotta have a transporter mishap, like T'Pol missing some clothes or something. Supposed to be the first transporter system and yet it works perfectly. Just makes ya feel sorry for the work that Scotty, O'Brien, LaForge and Torres put out to keep it working for at least 2-3 episodes in a row.

Dr. Phlox was pretty cool, though would they really be putting an unknown species as their doctor on the first Starfleet Starship? Doubtful. He's more of a mix between The EMH Doctor and Neelix, ya know, happy-go-lucky with medical training. So if you're partying with him and you're dancing like Tuvok did and you fall down then brake your leg, he can fix it on the spot and you can go back to breaking your leg again.

The casting IMO is good, except with Jolene Blalock.

[JediTricks]

For me, it's nearly bed time, so this is from my now-foggy memory, please forgive any mistakes:

It's 90 years after the events of "First Contact" where Cochrane made his historic flight, and many humans apparently feel held back by the Vulcans both in terms of diplomacy with the rest of the galaxy and with the development of warp speed and other technology. This gives a new spin on McCoy's hard-headed thinking towards Spock in TOS. Also another throw-back to McCoy's way of thinking is the pointing out that transporters are just now being tested for human use, and nobody wants to use them. Anyway, a Klingon has crashed on Earth and is chased down by creepy sand-skinned baddies called the Sauurin. The Klingon blows them up, but since he doesn't speak english, he's shot by a Human with a plasma shotgun (I kid you not) who doesn't know what the evil-looking alien is doing or saying. Captain Archer is called to Starfleet medical where he finds a few Admirals and some Vulcans discussing the Klingon, who's being worked on by Dr Phlox. The Vulcans want to respect the honor of death from battle the Klingon society respects, but Archer finds out that the Klingon may not die at all, but merely may need further medical attention. Archer clashes with the Vulcans, especially the female named T'pol. The Vulcans don't want Archer and Starfleet to be the ones delivering the Klingon back to Quo'nos ("Kronos", the Klingon homeworld), but Starfleet wants to get out there and meet new folks, so after a scene where Archer brings in a communications officer (thus leading the viewer to imagine the other "gathering" he must do to pull this mission off in the 3 days he has), Archer is stuck with the Vulcan he most cheesed off as his science officer, and of course, she's hot to look at but isn't thrilled to be there. The Enterprise NX-01 is going out for it's first run, and the ship uses new warp engines that Capt Archer's dad designed and died before seeing used "because of the Vulcans." On the way to the Klingon homeworld, Klaang (the Klingon courier our heroes are returning to his homeworld) is stolen away by the Saurrin baddies who can go invisible when they shut the power down on the whole ship. However, thanks to luck and a worthless translator, we believe he MAY have visited a planet called Rigel 10 before hitting Earth, which is confirmed by T'pol who wasn't allowed to share this info originally with the humans. They also killed one of the enemy saurrins, who Dr Phlox says has been manipulated to have enhancements that are not natural.

Getting to the planet, a small away team comprised of the first officer, the captain, the Vulcan, the young ensign helmsman, the armory officer, and the communications officer, heads down to what can only be guessed is the ONLY city on the planet, a small snowy little dirty dump. During this, we see Klaang being interrogated by the evil Saurrins who find out that he knows little and was carrying nothing, even though he was the courier who met with one of their enemies, they then send some guys to intercept Archer and crew. We also meet some "time distortion room" type thing where a mysterious shadowy figure gives orders to the Saurrin. Back to the crew, after a split-up which leads to some goofiness, T'pol pointing out how the human desire to put their nose into everything and impose their values on everybody is not always the right thing to do, and some alien sex-club/prostitution scene, Archer is found by some Saurrins and a "sexy lady" who confronts him about the Klingon and the mission and what he knows yadda yadda, then kisses him and morphs into a Saurrin, but explains how she's not a baddie and how she was trying to help the infighting Klingon factions who are being manipulated from an unknown force from the future involved in a "Temporal Cold War" - this force is also giving the other Saurrins a leg-up in evolution and using them as puppets. Obviously, the Saurrins don't want this info getting out. Then they're ambushed, and go to escape to their shuttle pod but the good-guy Saurrin chick gets killed. The rest of our heroes get back to the shuttle where there are more baddies shooting at them, and when T'pol is knocked down by an escaping Saurrin ship's exhaust leaving her unable to get to the shuttle pod, Archer goes back and saves her, but gets shot in the leg. She drags the capt to the shuttle and they get out of there, and on their way back to the ship, T'pol announces that she's the next-highest ranking officer and is taking command of the Enterprise, which doesn't set well with everybody.


When the crew gets back to the ship, we learn that the first officer and T'pol had come into contact with a spore which is bad, so they both go into the decontamination chamber where they strip down to their undies while the doctor passes lotion to them to kill the spore. While they're rubbing their barely-clothed bodies down in graphic detail, they discuss what the next move should be, T'pol wants to go back to Earth in failure, but first officer wants to track the Saurrin ship, there's strife and conflict and a touch of sexual tension, and when Archer comes to, he learns that they're following the Saurrin ship. Eventually, they find the base of these Saurrins and fly into a gas giant, capture an enemy ship, Archer and first officer trojan horse over to the base with 2 pieces of new tech -- a device which demagnatizes any hull within 2 km or something (which is important since the base is made of little pods all magnetized together), and new "phase pistols" which have 2 settings - stun and kill. While the Enterprise - with T'pol in command - is waiting for Archer to return and is hiding in a different level of the atmosphere of the gas giant planet, the ship is being homed in upon by the missiles of the enemy and has to move, which means Archer won't be able to find them. Apparently, the ship doesn't even have shields. So they find Klaang alive thanks to a surprisingly accurate tricorder, they get into a firefight, Archer sends Klaang and First Officer along while he sets the demag charge, and when it goes off, all chaos lets loose and Archer can't get to the pod, so he uses his communicator to tell First Officer to take off, drop off the Klingon, and come back for him. When First Officer and Klaang get back to the Ent, the FO and T'pol again clash on the nature of the mission, T'pol wants to split and thinks that Archer wasn't interested in being saved, he just wanted to make sure that FO and Klaang got away, but FO disagrees. While this is going on, Archer finds the "Time Room" and battles the head Saurrin baddie, they fight, Archer gets away, and the Ent ends up having to use the transporter to save him, something that's never been tested before. The transport goes ridiculously smoothly and the Ent gets away. Finally, they deliver Klaang to the Klingon homeworld, and the Klingon higher ups take a sample of Klaang's blood, analyze it, and there's a piece of helix which contains data, data that the guy from the future didn't want the Klingons getting. With this mission complete, Archer gets new instructions that they don't head back to Earth, but they begin the "boldly go" mission. Archer, who still hasn't told anybody (as far as we know) about the whole Temporal Cold War issue, privately asks T'pol to stay on as the science officer, she agrees, and the show ends.

[JediTricks]

Yeah, I have nothing against cheap sex scenes in most entertainment, explotive crap is ok in some types of shows for me, and they did have both the First Officer and Archer himself in their tight, revealing underwear (note to producers: as a heterosexual man, I really didn't need a close-up of Scott Bakula's crotch) so it's not like they're just exploiting women on the show, but with Trek, it feels extra tawdry and sleezy in a business sort of way, like someone trying to bring in horny teenage boys so Paramount can jack up ratings and sell products.

[LTBasker]

The topless scenes in Voyager or the all nude scene with Jadzia in DS9 wasn't enough...oiy.

Btw, the Klingon crash lands in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. It's a real place so... I'm suprised those dudes found him there considering it's about as far away as you can get.

[britcit3]

JT, you are a true gent and you have my eternal thanks.

Bit disappointed that the Klingon/Fed war dosen't "kick-off" in the episode though.

The temporal person - was it male or female - wouldn't it be great if it was Sela?

Many thanks

BC3

[SWAFMAN]

I didn't see the episode, but thanks to JT, I feel as though I did. That must've taken at least as long to type up as the running time of the show. Thanks very much, JT!

As I read the comments about the show, I thought that one potential plot twist could be that the transporter really *didn't* work as well as it appeared. I mean, granted, he didn't materialize on the pad as a pool of jelly with some teeth & wads of hair floating in it, but wouldn't it be interesting if there was some sort of change- a transcription error - which causes him to develop some anomalous behavior or physiological event?

stay tuned?.......