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STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE 09/10/'03: "The Xindi" (1 Viewer)

derek

Second Unit
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Dec 20, 1998
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494
Overall I thought it was a good episode. As much as the writing may lack my affinity for most of the characters is still growing. This is key to Enterprise's survival. It is also a testimony to the actors and actresses. While some has been made of the multi-specied Xindi being an 'out' for the creators I'm much more bothered by the 'time travel' out which has been way too often abused in Enterprise. Also agree about the pointless titilation scene I mean really as someone mentioned do the producers think these 'baits' will draw hearty fans to a scifi genre show? I think the Xindi and Delphic Expanse could be quite interesting (did anyone think that one reptilian Xindi species looked like the bad guy alien from 'Galaxy Quest?') It would be neat if the five species (reptile, ape primate, human, insect, water mammal) of Xindi represented descendents of life originating in the mysterious Delphic Expanse. Sorta the 'cradle/center' of this universe (with all its anomalties)...maybe 'created' by another alien race or experiment gone awry perhaps? Hey maybe the species of Earth are descendents of these guys and we end up wiping out our ancestors in 400 years!
 

Qui-Gon John

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The worst thing about the cargo bay anamoly is they never had closure, as to what was causing it and has it continued or stopped. Tripp was great, as usual. He continues to remind me so much of McCoy.

Oh, and were I remembered Xindi from was the little speech by the hologram about the Delphic Expanse and the Xindi, from the last episode last season.
 

Francois Caron

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Angelique Pettyjohn, Shana of "Gamester Of Triskelion"...
At least the pseudo "love scenes" in those episodes had the decency to be an integral part of the storyline and not some cheap add-on thrown in to bait impressionable male virgins into watching the show. :)

As one person stated, this show appears to have been designed by a committee or at the very least guided by ratings and demographics. That's why premium services like HBO and Showtime are so successful. They rely on a subscriber base to stay alive, not ratings or demographics, giving them the opportunity to experiment a bit and turn out exceptional shows. As long as the Star Trek franchise is not given the opportunity to push aside ratings and demographics and grow on its own merit, the franchise is doomed.
 

Colin Davidson

Second Unit
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Jan 6, 1999
Messages
409
Thought the episode was interesting in a "staring at a car wreck" sort of way.

Was it just me or was MACO's = Star Trek Elite Force PC game tie-in? Chang is the same character name in both the episode and the game, even look similar. Didnt catch other MACO's names to check for a connection.

Also the sniper rifle scene at the end of the escape. Why did the MACO sniper need to be ordered to get out of the shuttle and shoot the bad guy on the tower? Other than allowing the xindi to get shot.
 

Ivan Lindenfeld

Second Unit
Joined
Apr 23, 2000
Messages
335
OK, I saw the second half of it. I forgot to set the PVR and realized halfway through so I recorded the second half and watched last night. Now that you're all cought up on my problems...

There were improvements. Production value is much higher, IMO. Sets are more complex. There must have been 5 or 6 set pieces in the 2nd half hour. The new bridge refresh looks more individually "ST:E" instead of ST:VOY. T'Pol's new outfit is gooood. Her new hair is goood. The actor playing the leader of the Marines is good, from his other roles, we'll see how he plays here. (I think he was RFK in the film "Thirteen Days.")

I felt like I missed the setup for the Trip/T'pol shirtless scene in the first half, but reading this thread, guess not. I thought that scene had genuine humor, actually. And I am not a big subscriber to "every gratuitous sexy shot must forward the plot." I guess years of NYPD Blue fandom cured me of that. :) My wife wanted to see Trip's ass, to be fair. :)

Lots of action, and not only that the action was choreographed well enough to follow. The suspense of the plasma flowing up the vent (Trip, Archer and Xindi humanoid) was felt by me. I liked that scene.

My wife and I are suckers for Star Trek, so we'll keep watching. Linda Park is a good actress I hope she has something to do this year.

Trek on.
 

Chris Beveridge

Second Unit
Joined
Jul 3, 1998
Messages
349
Having finally taken in the opener, after dropping off early in the second season, I got a strong vibe from the first couple of minutes of the show that just got stronger as it went on.

Enterprise: 9/11

The Trek franchises for the most part are interesting windows into the times they were created. The original series is very much a product of the 60's in very many ways. TNG reflects the differences between the 60's and 80's quite well, and I still think DS9 does an excellent job of saying just how much more complex and interwined everything is. I'll even give Voyager a nod for the disassociated feeling people had throughout part of the 90's, especially from "the command level", if you want to tie it to politics.

Enterprise now screams Bush+US foreign policy+9/11 now. The way you had Archer and Tripp just pushing people around, some of the phrases from Tripp about just doing what needs to be done and so forth. The addition of an actual military presence into the daily routine of the crew.

I swung between laughing outright at it and finding it rather creepy to see what it's become. Especially if you place any value in the "reflection of the times" theory.
 

Jason Seaver

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Production value is much higher, IMO. Sets are more complex.
Really? Because both the new command center and the Xindi round table looked pretty cramped and uninspired to me. I immediately thought of that Klingon courtroom, where the atmosphere should have been epic, but wasn't.
 

Qui-Gon John

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And I still think the picture quality of this show is very poor. Colors are weak and washed out. Everything else I watch on my same TV, (DVD, other channels, tapes, etc.) seems fine, better compared to Enterprise.
 

John Madia

Second Unit
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May 13, 2003
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259
Considering how bad I felt Enterprise to be last season, I was just going to tape the episodes and watch them after I finished all the seasons of DS9 since I didn't want to associate DS9's Star Trek world with Enterprise's version of Trek. Well, for some reason I tuned into the season premiere today and association between the two doesn't seem to be a problem because Enterprise has no Star Trek feel to it whatsoever. It just felt like bad Sci-fi and I didn't really like anything about it. The first two seasons created a cast a characters I cared nothing about and the changes this season actually made them worse. Archer is now a just plain Bad Captain. He now approaches every problem pissed off and doesn't even think about the consequences of his actions. Which might explain why Trip is still on active duty. He shouldn't even be on this mission in the first place considering the way he's handling the death of his sister. Didn't Archer even think that he might not be the best guy to bring along when meeting a xindi for the first time? Travis and hoshi are still pretty much nothing and t'pol is acting less and less like a Vulcan. Phlox and Reed are the two best developed characters but I still don't really care about either one.

The entire Xindi mission makes no sense. Once they find their home world, then what? Are they going to say "Excuse me, but why did you attack our planet?" Are they going to take on the entire Xindi race with one starship? Don't they think the Xindi will be waiting for them? As for the Xindi, shouldn't they have waited for their second weapon to be built before attacking Earth?

I can go on and on about all the things I disliked about this episode (I almost turned it off after I saw the insect Xindi in the beginning) but suffice to say I've given up on this show. I'll wipe it from my version of Star Trek canon (not hard considering how un Star Trek the show feels) and just be glad that I didn't waste my time taping this season.

Luckily for me I've still got the rest of DS9 to watch along with the majority of Original Series episodes and a handful of Next Generation episodes which I have never seen. Also, there's a lot of good->great Star Trek novels which I've been meaning to get to. Could any Enterprise episode even come close to "Immortal Coil"?
 

Shane Archer

Agent
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Dec 10, 1999
Messages
28
I didn't notice too much of a change from previous years' Enterprise. Same suspect writing, same not-quite-Trek feel, and so on and so on. The only real difference is the story, which, as others have mentioned, really doesn't make sense. The Enterprise is the Earth's last hope? In fact, there is an entire alien "council" of Xindi that is bent on the destruction of Earth, all because of the idea that Earth will destroy them in the future? The whole concept is just downright odd.

Enterprise isn't all that good but it's enough to hold my interest and make me keep watching.

And LESS T&A is something I'd like to see. That breast-holding shot of T'Pol was pathetic.
 

Lewis Besze

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Well, you see more on "The O.C." if all you're after is titillation on TV.
You missed the point.Nobody is "after anything",but I've yet to know any straight man who would have problem to look at Ms. Blalock with or without cloths,in any context. I guess B/B thought the same way.
 

Patrick Sun

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Let's just say that I would find it really sad that these bare breast holding scenes of T'Pol's were only there to appeal to straight men in a gratuitous fashion, and the scene does seem to be added just for that effect. It's pandering to a very low common denominator, and if that's all B&B have to offer on a weakly(sic) basis, this show really needs to be junked.
 

Shea

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Messages
125
I don't get UPN, but this(and Jake 2.0 right after which I DID see tonight) does show on the local Fox station at 9pm. I thought the season premiere was going to be next week so I missed it(was watching the Conan special anyway). I don't suppose anyone happened to record the episode and could send it to me? I'd send it back after watching.:D
 

Glenn Overholt

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Gee, there is nothing like reading 115 posts to get caught up (as I only saw this Sunday morning_.

Rex, first of all, I almost fell out of my chair when you corrected Enterprise to read Star Trek: Enterprise. Is somebody seeing things that I'm not?

This is not supposed to be a Star Trek show, even with all of the smilarites to previous shows.

Ok, everybody is screaming at me for being such an idiot, but if they wanted it to be called Star Trek: Enterprise, then why didn't they? Did the copyright run out? :)

Next, with the Lieutenant and the Major. Even without considering which rank is higher, how would one officer address another one? Hey, shithead?

And for those that consider seeing T'Pol like that to be unnecessary, I'd like to know why the card games and the plays were so necessary in TNG. I am of the belief that they were there because they couldn't figure out how to stretch the plot to fill in the extra time.

Logging out
Glenn
 

Mike Broadman

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And for those that consider seeing T'Pol like that to be unnecessary, I'd like to know why the card games and the plays were so necessary in TNG. I am of the belief that they were there because they couldn't figure out how to stretch the plot to fill in the extra time.
Those were usually character building scenes, mixed in with a bit of comedy. That sort of thing is essential to a good show.

And, in one instance, the poker game was essential to the plot (when they were living the same day over and over again).

These kinds of scenes are every bit as important as when the trans-warp phase misducer or whatever gets broken.
 

Nelson Au

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Mar 16, 1999
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19,027
Saw it again Sunday night when it's repeated.

The issue of the flying cargo in the hold was explained, well, sort of. The dialogue was kind of obscured in Bakula's delivery. He said something to the effect that this was one of many incidents on board the ship. It is not isolated to this area of the ship.

At the risk of eliciting many flaming replies, upon listening to the new theme again, if you don't watch the screen and just listen as I was doing, it sounded pretty good! Nice little upbeat pop tune. The new guitar work keeps it moving along. If it's appropriate for this show is another issue.

Nelson
 

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