Enterprise 05/07/2003 - Regeneration (1 Viewer)

[Kwang Suh]

Massive spoilers:


Well, sorta decent.

Malcolm modifies the phasers so that him and Archer can shoot down about, oh, 10 Borgs before they finally adapt. Yup.

Phlox gets assimilated, and cures himself by dosing himself with Omicron radiation. He was also very resistent to the nanoprobes. Well, how convenient.

The Borg end up sending a signal back to the Delta Quadrant that TPol said would take about 200 years to reach them. Makes ya wonder, eh?

Well, it's obvious that this episode firmly concludes that this was first contact between SF and the Borg.

What really irked me about this episode was that it actually was well done, but why the Borg? Jeez. Stupid sweeps week.

 

[Francois Caron]

I missed the start of the show and watched only five minutes of it halfway through. Then I realized I simply didn't care anymore. The uncensored Osbournes on CTV was much more entertaining.

 

[Scooter]

I watched this last night and enjoyed it. I was apprehensive being a Borg episode..but they played it out nicely.

Regards the spoiler above:

Not sure this is the first Federation encounter with the Borg. Earlier episode had the ship in the care of an auto-repair facility that could also auto-repair itself..seemed like the seeds of the Borg to me. Also..not earth's first encounter as the captain alluded to the "First Contact" movie.

 

[Everlasting Gobstopper]

Earlier episode had the ship in the care of an auto-repair facility that could also auto-repair itself..seemed like the seeds of the Borg to me.

 

[Tony Whalen]

Thought it was a good ep. I couldn't help but notice that the label/name/designation "Borg" wasn't mentioned once... anywhere.

Although I did think "Hey! It's Borg meets The Thing!", at least for the opening.

No complaints... they didn't seem to screw up continuity at all. I could certainly see this relativley minor encounter being forgotton by Picard's time... a couple of centuries can make records hard-to-find... just so long as this Borg-episode was a one-shot. Much as I like the Borg... I don't wanna see 'em again in Enterprise...

Two minor nit-picks. Ya.. didn't like how they were able to shoot so many Borg with their phase-pistols. Two, I could have SWORN that when Enterprise destroyed the transport/borg-vessel, that it launched photon torpedoes.
Or was I seeing things?

 

[Michael TLV]

Greetings

Of course this collective was all of 29 people so it takes a bit longer to adapt to the pistols.

Regards

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Tony Whalen wrote (post #5):

An Enterprise pattern. Bring on the Ferengi (#19 "Acquisition"); never name them. Bring on the Borg; never name them. Bring on the . . . . well, you get the picture.

As to the episode, we shall see. Is there anything left worth saying about the Borg? And, even if there were, could the present production team find it within them to say it? (I'm avoiding the "spoilers" for now.)

 

[Jack Briggs]

I read them, Rex. Not encouraging. But what do we expect by now?

 

[doug zdanivsky]

Good episode. But I'm torn..

Nice action, drama, etc..

But how in God's green Earth are they going to fix what would seem to be, to me anyway, a gaping hole they've made in the timeline?

What? All the data they're going to collect and file away on this encounter just dissappears, and in 200 years, no one knows anything about these guys, again?!?

Who cares if they don't have a name?! They have images, eye-witness accounts..

I don't get how they can all make this fit...

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

I watched this episode against my better judgement
and yeah ... I was underwhelmed as I watched it. I mean, it was a mixture of - "This Sucks! There's Borg on Enterprise already?!" and "This is kinda' neat. There's Borg in Enterprise." ... so it all evened out to a
resounding, "Meh."

I was pissed off that there wasn't some kind of Starfleet cover up mentioned! Otherwise the "Cybernetic Organisms" would be firmly in the Starfleet Memorybanks when they encounter them in TNG. Am I just to assume that they "forgot" about them or something or said ... Wow! that was weird! an entire Scientific team was wiped out and The Enterprise was almost lost too ... but hey, it's not worth remembering." I mean, that's true from a fan point of view indeed ... but come'on!!!



Enterprise is plain crapola and we have the writing team of Berman and Braga to thank for it!

 

[CameronS]

Please God, no more Borg. Although I think you can make excuses for the timeline, I think they have already screwed it up. Maybe this is the slight alternate reality after First Contact which causes first contact with the federation 200 years before it originally did. :rolleyes

So I take this as proof that there are no more original ideas for Star Trek. It's all been done now.

 

[DeathStar1]

I was already to bash this episode, considering it's another TNG alien re-hash wich show lack of original thinking. However, I rather liked it. One of the better season 2 episodes.

The 'Original Captain of the Enterprise' thing seems like a Captain Pike Wanna be ep, but it looks good. I think I'll just skip the obvious T and A that is the T'Pol episode in the second hour....

 

[WayneG]

No complaints... they didn't seem to screw up continuity at all. I could certainly see this relativley minor encounter being forgotton by Picard's time

Well, I haven't watched Enterprise all season but I saw the beginning and was curious about it being on Earth so I stuck through it. It was pretty much a re-hash of the worst of the Borg episodes, and in my Trek world I'm disregarding it because it doesn't make sense.

I don't think it would be disgarded as a minor episode, especially considering the signal sent to the Delta Quadrant (are we suppose to believe now that this signal is how the Borg know about Earth and not because of the sneak preview courtesy of Q?). I think this was a pretty major episode, encountering cybernetic beings that can transform people into semi-robots. If anything, this is something that would have fascinated Data and would have known all about it at the Q encounter. It shows the producers don't care about continuity.

This episode makes me glad I haven't seen the show this year - and won't anymore.

 

[Will_B]

Holy moly, I am underwhelmed by the responses here.

This was the best Enterprise ever, and if this was the first episode produced under the mandate of a "radical new direction" that would explain why this episode was so incredible.

First look at the risks - a quarter of the show with no regular cast members (the Thing sequence). New music cues, even some music from First Contact I think. Different camera work to the extreme (the camera work on the bridge had already been changing, but it was even more pronounced here). They appear to have reset some of the electronics on the sets to make the bridge much, much more active, which added to the tension subliminally. Better editing - if an explosion started in one scene they shook the image in the next (which they may or may not have bothered with in the past, not seeming to care much about making a motion picture quality production).

And there was an actual 4 act structure (plus epilogue) to the story which kept every section interesting.

Art direction - did you see the Arctic matte animations when the laser bursts were coming out of the side of the base? This sort of creativity simply has not been seen on Enterprise. They used to get away with simply putting in the sound of a phaser off camera and hoping we wouldn't notice how freaking cheap the show had become.

But someone has put their feet to the fire, and they came out cooking. Oh my that sounds like a paid blurb.

If you thought you had to wait till next season for the changes to be seen... nope.

I too was blase about the show. It has been dull. Which reminds me, look at the new way the cast is allowed to interact with their sets - Archer was slamming those lunch room windows open and stuff - which wouldn't be remarkable except that most everyone had been acting so stiff and unnatural that this sudden realism was most welcome! Reed got to be military - Hoshi got to communicate - the characters were used well.

This show is going to spike in the ratings if they keep this up.

And Phlox finally had a moment, too. Thought he was going to cry when he bat was fed.

Bravo.

And as for any discontinuity, not so - we dont know that when Picard informed Starfleet that Q had shown them a Borg cube, that they didn't put 2 + 2 together. We also can't assume that Q wasn't showing them a cube that was headed in their direction already. We just assumed, because Picard eloquently said "now they are aware of us...they will come for us" that this was the first time they were aware of earth. We assumed that. The writers have deftly woven in the first series (Enterprise) into the existing big-story as well as Yesterday's Enterprise...nitpickers be darned - and remember, Next Gen changed the timeline ever so slightly in First Contact. So we're maybe only in a 99% the same timeline now.

 

[doug zdanivsky]

What could possibly be gained from Starfleet covering this whole incident up?!

Nope, I say they're grasping at straws, flailing away with anything that worked in all of the previous Star Trek stuff in the hopes it will keep them afloat..

It was a good episode, but it's at the expense of pulling away at the fabric that made the Star Trek universe interesting (in that it made sense, events were tied to one another, etc). Now we're left with this discombobulated mess...

 

[Kwang Suh]

I have now decided that this is the episode where Enterprise has "jumped the shark". Pretty soon, we're going to see Q on the show. And then Poochie will show up and form the Federation.

I can't believe that the Enterprise team (not just B&B) have already run so dry on ideas that they had to bring the _Borg_ back.

Aww heck. Just have TPol prancing around topless. Might as well enjoy the show at some level.

 

[Richard Paul]

Personally I really tried to like Enterprise, I tried ignoring the horrible opening song and the fact that the storylines are shadows of the ones found on all the other Star Trek series, even Voyager had a few, but after 7 episodes I stopped watching. No offense but with the combination of two nitwit writers and the lack of any good ones the only new direction I want to see in this series is cancellation. No offense to those who like it but I want to have a new Star Trek series which I can look forward to watching like ST:TNG and STSN were. The funny thing is I knew the prequel idea was bad when I first heard of the series but I had hoped that Scott Bakula could save it. I suppose even a good actor needs a good script though. The whole new direction idea is hopefully there last chance before Enterprise is cancelled. The rumor of a Star Trek series based on Starfleet Academy cadets would've turned out better than Enterprise.

 

[Randy Tennison]

My favorite episode this season. It had real tension, dramatic acting, and a plot that didn't resolve itself by "talking" or "negotiating" or "sneaking out". They blew the ship up! Kick Ass!

Seriously, I liked seeing the internal strugle Archer had with killing the two Borg. It's almost like you could see, at that moment, he left part of himself behind. He realised that his ideals would not serve him in every situation.

If this is the start of the "reworking" of Enterprize, bring it on. Finally, it might get better.

 

[Mark Kalzer]

It was entertaining, but the end feeling was that, there was no point to this episode. Oh, there was one, to foreshadow an event that, we've already watched. In my opinion, the show just did not add enough to the Borg plot to warrant screwing up with the continuity as much as it did. Honestly, can't the writers get away from the need to re-tell stories which take place centuries later, (essentially devaluing those ones too) and bring in more originality? "Cogeniter" was a great show, because it showed distinct creativity. I had hoped this could keep up, but "Regeneration" is just another annoying setback.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Will_B wrote (post #14):

2 + 2 = 5.

"Let's just pretend that old 'Q Who?' never happened." The audience just "assumes" that what they---the omniscient narrators---tell us in any given episode need not be true or valid in any given future episode ("future" our time, not theirs, of course); revision (First Contact) after revision (Voyager "The Raven" (#174)) after revision (Enterprise "Regeneration"). Blame it on the "timeline": "We're in a different quantum reality this week, pal. Deal with it!" "After all, anything can happen in science fiction." (An actual Rick Berman quote.)

Next we'll learn that the Borg were there at the "creation of humanity" and helped along the process just so they would have someone new to assimilate.

Now, let's see, you're saying that the ST production team couldn't have had this same basic plot with some other ("new") space alien race with a(n at least slightly) different gimmick and the episode wouldn't have been just as good???

And the Borg-crutch? Does the implausibility of all this (including, and, especially, Phlox's "irradiation cure") having been "forgotten" by Star Fleet or having been kept hidden during "later" encounters with the Borg not register at all here?

It's more clear than ever that there are serious fans of the franchise who want an intelligent and reasonably consistent presentation of the world of Star Trek and then there are the rest who care only about getting their cheap "jollies" from one episode to the next.

Guess who's being catered to by today's ST producers?

It's not we "nitpickers" who will be damned.