STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE 09/17/'03: "Anomaly" (1 Viewer)

[Will Cunningham]

I didn't love or hate this episode. I think it was ok. I don't have a strong opinion on the anomolies, I am just glad they are being consistant. The vulcan's warned them about anomolies, and they have remained a constant issue since they entered the expanse...not really a full on story arc, but some nice consistancy for a change.

I also was excited when the pirate mentioned trillium-D as the metal that stops the anomolies. The only thing I did not like was that the crew did not try and obtain some while in the sphere, or at least grab stuff they could trade. It was a nice mini-connection to the previous episode.

Trip still having sleeping problems is also the first sign of a character arc. I am becoming cautiously optomistic that the days of "solve everything by the end of the episode" days of Star Trek may be coming to a close allowing for character development.

 

[Nelson Au]

It would be a pity if the current season continues it's improvements and no one sees it. Particularly when the popular Smallville airs in October. Hopefully UPN's move to jump start the season earlier then the WB show will help it gather the vibe it needs to lock in a larger fanbase. Judging by the reaction in this forum, I mean the slow reaction to posting comments, shows that there is already a greater erosion to viewership. Overnight ratings according to Trekweb show a slight dip in ratings from last week's "The Xindi".

Overall reaction though has been hugely positive for Anomoly over at Trekweb.

 

[TheLongshot]

That's no moon!

A pretty decent episode, actually. Not much to have a problem with here, tho I did find it interesting that all they need to do to recompress the room is open the door. I also would have liked to have seen Malcolm step in.

Best of all, only one scene of people in various stages of undress!

My fiance was SO disappointed that she missed Bacula shirtless...

Jason

 

[Andrew Beacom]

It had it's moments and its good that the reset button maybe given a rest. I don't like the angry Archer track but it may go somewhere interesting so I'll bare with it.

It had some stuff that was stupid like Archer throwing things around when he doesn't know what they are and the whole database download thing. How convenient that they had a database with "probably" everything Enterprise wanted to know about the Xindi.

A step in the right direction. Although next weeks looks positively ridiculous. A planet of people that, shock, horror used to be Enterprise. They just can't leave the time travel thing alone can they?

 

[Al Shing]

The time travel thing went all the way back to first season Star Trek TOS, so they really can't leave it alone. It's an integral part of ST. The best episode of all time was "City on the Edge of Forever", a time travel episode.

 

[todd s]

I enjoyed the episode. The reviewer at www.trektoday.com was upset by the way Archer reacted when he decided to put the pirate in the airlock. The reviewer said it was too soon to see Archer "lose it" and no other Trek captain would have done that(Although, Janeway almost did). I say he did what was necessary. Archer has no idea how much time Earth has. And if he has to break the rules to get any new info on the Xindi, he will. I found it more realistic. The reviewer has forgotten that Kirk has broken many rules to help the greater good.

 

[Andrew Beacom]

The time travel thing went all the way back to first season Star Trek TOS, so they really can't leave it alone. It's an integral part of ST. The best episode of all time was "City on the Edge of Forever", a time travel episode.

Theres a difference between in being a part of ST and it being used as a crutch by the writers. Like it currently is IMO. Theres been a bunch of time travel on Enterprise and theres even a temporal war that was used as a major thread in the first 2 seasons.

 

[Patrick Sun]

What was up with the Death Star showing up in the Star Trek universe?

 

[Nathan_F]

Death Star? Geonosians (the bug-Xindi)... I think the Expanse is actually the Star Wars universe!

 

[Jason Seaver]

The time travel thing went all the way back to first season Star Trek TOS, so they really can't leave it alone. It's an integral part of ST.

Ah, but back then, there was only something like one a year. Latter-day TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise use it ALL THE TIME; I remember a question on usenet after the third or fourth Voyager episode about where effect was always going to precede cause on this show.

Besides, TOS and DS9 generally used time travel to tell interesting stories about the characters, or at least having fun with the story structure, where B&B-Trek seem to be endlessly fascinated by the made-up-science of the anomolies. It's used too often, in a mechanistic way.

 

[todd s]

How funny would it have been when they saw the Sphere that one of the crewmembers says:

"Oh my god, it's the Death Star" Then mentioning "you know from that old scifi movie."

 

[Shane D]

Did anyone else notice how inthe airlock scene, the action seemed.. i dont know, sped up like they dropped frames to give a jerky motion?

 

[Will_B]

time travel

Time issues are finally being used interestingly now though. In only two episodes we've seen the destroyed Xindi homeworld even though it wasn't supposed to be destroyed for centuries, and a giant sphere which T'Pol said was a thousand years old and which was in some mysterious way connected to all the spatial anomalies. I'm not going to get all fannish and try to figure it out, I'm just saying I'm loving the rapid creation of this pocket-of-universe or whatever it is. It's impossible to tell what time this universe exists in, or whether there will be more "death stars" - I suspect there will be. I'm loving this.

And I agree, even the special effects space scenes have much better cinematography now.

 

[GordonL]

I didn't like that the pirates knew everything about earthlings despite this being their first contact with this species? They knew where to beam on board, what to take, earthlings being too civilized to torture captives, etc. Shooting out the security mechanism to get the door to the sphere open? How convenient. It was an ok episode if I don't think about it too hard. At least better than the dreck last year.

 

[Al Shing]

Ah, but back then, there was only something like one a year. Latter-day TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise use it ALL THE TIME;

First Season ST:TOS had "The Naked Time", "Tomorrow is Yesterday", and "City on the Edge of Forever", all of which had time travel in the plot. Season Two had "Assignment:Earth". Season Three had "All Our Yesterdays". So, the consensus best season, the first, had three time travel episodes.

 

[Lewis Besze]

Well, I think they've exploited boobs that defy gravity for far too long..

Well they wasted Seven Of Nine for what, 3 seasons?
I think the show is improving a bit compared to the last season.

 

[Tony Whalen]

I guess I'm the only one that did NOT think Death Star. Why is it than anything metallic and spherical in space is automatically a "death star"? Lucas doesn't have a copyright on outer-space-spherical constructs. Dyson spheres ,for example, were around in sci-fi long before the Death Stars were.

Oh, and that's exactly what I thought when I saw it. DYSON SPHERE! COOL! Then someone on the bridge mentioned that it was only 12 kilometers across....

Personally, thought it was a good episode. Glad to see Portos again. AngryArcher is a bit much. I hope he doesn't continue to frown and growl all season long. I LOVED the airlock sequence. (Very Kirk-ish..heh.)

I figured that all the anomaly activity would drive the critics of the anomaly in the previous episode nuts, but I can't understand why people have issues with this when it was CLEARLY established that the laws of physics may not apply in the "Expanse". *shrug*

I enjoyed it.

 

[doug zdanivsky]

I daresay that it's probably as far from any re-hashing as this series has been to date.

Huh? They've already done one of these on Enterprise (Ferengi). Did you miss that one (not that anyone could blame you)? And it's been done on Star Trek TOS, TNG, and probably on Voyager as well, but I stopped watching that after 6 shows (Janeway's voice was like nails on a chalkboard to me, especially when in over-acting mode).

PS - I finally caught the theme song at the start.. What the %$#@!!!! What was the point of adding a country twang to it?!?! I'd like to see the focus group of idiots who thought that was what was really missing from Enterprise.. Then again, maybe not.. I wouldn't be able to keep my fists at my sides..

 

[Jason Seaver]

I can't understand why people have issues with this when it was CLEARLY established that the laws of physics may not apply in the "Expanse". *shrug*

(A) Because saying that the laws of physics may not apply/be the same in the Expanse is a fundamentally stupid idea. Tweak them even a little and suddenly the bonds that hold two hydrogen atoms to an oxygen atom may not hold, at which point you've got problems which make floating coffee cups super-duper trivial.

(of course, you've collapased into component atoms, if not quarks, so who cares about the coffee?)

(B) It effects everything but people. In the open, folks only got bumped around if the floor knocked them over, despite the fact that the gravity field causing the floor to warp would have effected them, too. At first, I thought it might be explained as a magnetic disturbance that only effected metal, until Archer's coffee started floating. I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of organic matter in that.

(C) The application seems improbable. These anomolies seem to be synchronizing their movement with that of a ship traveling very fast (faster than light, in fact). Even if you have no difficulty swallowing that (and the ones ripping through the ship made more sense than the ones hovering in the cargo bays), you'd think the characters would mention it as a peculiar characteristic.

(D) It's a crutch. Creating suspense in science fiction requires a consistent, well-thought-out set of rules. Without them, the space between a problem appearing and being resolved is just arbitrary action which doesn't mean anything to the audience. It allows the writers to do anything without it having to make sense, which seldom leads to good writing.

 

[johnbr]

I am bummed out that they did not blow it up.:frowning: