@chronosus I agree that the most frustrating part of this episode is that there's a really neat "who should Archer believe?" idea going on here, and then the show just kind of shrugs and goes "Sike! Silik was evil the whole time!" Waste of a good idea (which, sadly, is a description that fits a lot of Enterprise plots.)
Though in a nice piece of continuity, the flat planes representing different slices of time in Daniels's projection track reasonably well with the ones Burnham encounters when she's traveling through time in the Discovery s2 finale.
@andrewbloom I guess it's just a reflection of that period of TV. I remember Galactica being so refreshing exactly because it went for those moral gray areas and often misleading viewers while building larger story arcs, which was something ST has rarely or never done, as this and previous episode show. You could say in general TV shows from that era weren't really great in being subtle, that came a few years later.
Kudos for paying close attention, I must rewatch those parts.
@chronosus It boggles my mind that Enterprise and BSG aired so close in time to one another. They feel a decade apart in terms of style and approach. No spoilers, but there's future developments in Enterprise that make the BSG comparisons a little more direct, and this show doesn't look great with the juxtaposition.
@andrewbloom True, but what's even more mind boggling that in Discovery S02 they circled back to many of the same tropes that make previous Star Trek shows feels so dated, in what seems like a desperate attempt to please the "old" fans.
@chronosus What's funny to me is that it feels like Discovery is often chasing BSG's tail in terms of style and approach which, yeah, makes for a difficult marriage with Original Series characters and stories.
Review by ChronosusBlockedParentSpoilers2019-10-11T08:56:50Z
Essential
Themes: main season arc, time travel
Warning: contains ST Discovery Season 2 spoilers.
Finally we get to the main plot of suliban and Temporal Cold War. Episode starts with Sulik getting stripped of his supersight, which I guess is important for larger story because it shows that suliban can be stripped of genetic modification, which would explain why they haven't conquered the galaxy in any of the other shows.
Anyhow, the show introduces bellboy Daniels with captain seems familiar with. Enterprise is going to star nursery where they encounter a ship full of tech monks who are there to observe some rare phenomenon. They enter a plasma storm and almost encounter catastrophic cascade falure that would destroy the ship, if not for our friendly diguised avokado man. Now, that's a turn of events! Daniels reveals to captain he is time police, sent to 22nd century to prevent meddling with timeline and he believes Suliban is on the ship and saved them, and now wants captain to help catch him. Now, that's a turn of events. He has portable holodeck that displays the current timeline and device that allows him to walk through walls, which is enough to convince even skeptic T'Pol.
Meanwhile, Silik confronts captain and throws cloud of suspicion over Danielses motives. Now that's intriguing. Unfortunately, the rest of the episode gives us little reason to believe Sulik, as he kills Daniels and almost kills Archer. The question what they stand to gain from saving Enterprise still stands though. Sulik was after timeline thingy, but they lose both that and walk-through-walls device in a fight as Sulik makes his escape by HALO jumping out of the ship.
Add resistance to space conditions to long list of suliban enhancements, along with invisibility, contortion and climbing on walls.
Now, that's more like it! Really compelling storyline that puts Enterprise at the forefront of temporal war and with that brings gravity to its story and position in ST universe.
It's interesting to put facts that we got from Daniels into context. He says he is from approximately 900 years in the future. That would put him around year 3050. Last episode of Voyager ends around year 2400. In Discovery, Burnhams mom is stuck in approximately year 3150 (I guess Calypso Short Trek as well). And though Daniels doesn't say when time travel was invented, he says that primitive versions existed a century before. But Discovery plot discovers that humans already had working time travel device in 23rd century. Interesting, and I wonder if they even considered this episode when building a plot for Discovery, as clearly they worked on integrating Discovery into ST cannon.
One complaint I have is that they could have left it a little more ambiguous. They built up intrigue of whom to trust nicely, and if they left it at that it could have been much more intriguing going forward.