[7.6/10] “Talk less, fight more,” to paraphrase Aaron Burr (or his fictionalized equivalent), is not a bad mantra for Star Trek: Enterprise. Dialogue has never been the show’s strong suit. So as odd as it seems to have a Star Trek show more focused on fisticuffs and fireworks than high-minded meditations on diplomacy and philosophy, it may be playing to *Enterprise*s strengths.
Because the truth is that when you have the crew of Enterprise fighting off a pirate invasion, or trawling through an alien storehouse, or getting into a firefight with an alien ship, Enterprise is pretty enjoyable! I still contend it doesn't especially feel like Star Trek (or at least feels closer to the movie version of Trek that was bigger on excitement and less interested in the sort of thoughtful themes the T.V. series had time for), but it’s something that the show’s editors and effects team and camera crew is good at, which is more than you can say for the show’s script.
That said, however much I might bitch about lines here and there, the show does a good job at keeping the proceedings interesting, even apart from the skirmishes with an alien ship in the anomaly cluster of the Alpha Quadrant (I assume?). As I’ve said in prior write-ups, a lot of Star Trek episodes work best when the crew has clear goals. Here, the episode doesn't skimp on that.
Enterprise’s crew’s mission is clear: recover their lost gear before they run out of gas, track down the alien pirates who stole it; download the Xindi database from those same pirates. It helps add a directness to everything going on, where despite some of the “no, you guys, Enterprise is different now!* stuff, you can appreciate the show having a pretty clear throughline of cause and effect from minute one to minute forty-three.
The big problems are two-fold. For one, the show’s effects are just corny to a viewer in 2019. I try not to judge Enterprise too harshly on that front, anymore than I would judge The Original Series for putting a little dog in a cheap halloween costume and calling it an alien in the 1960s.
Still, willing suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain when you have Archer dealing with an obviously computer generated mid-air coffee spill, or a big lump roaming through the decks and tossing crewman flat on their asses. The idea that the laws of physics don’t work the same way in The Expanse is a novel one, especially when it means the usual warp equations don’t work, but the way the show tries to represent that idea is downright laughable in the modern era.
The other problem is that, apart from a reasonably tight story of the Enterprise crew losing their stuff, getting back, and then getting more still from the people who robbed them, “Anomaly” utterly belabors the point that Archer and everyone else is going to have to break some of their moral codes to get along in the expanse. The conversations between Archer and the captured pirate are completely and totally facepalm-worthy.
We get it, Enterprise! The Expanse calls for a more rough and tumble form of diplomacy than was possible in the rest of the Alpha Quadrant! And Archer in particular might be slipping morally and ethically given the demands of this region of space and his own frustrations over his home planet being attacked. There’s something to be said for the show dramatizing American anger circa 2003, and a sense of being wiling to torture prisoners and do other boundary-violating things that the shining city upon a hill would once shudder to countenance, at least publicly.
But as usual, the show makes that point with thunderous directness, making sure the audience understands in no uncertain terms that Archer is losing his moral compass when he suffocates the pirate for information, and having the same pirate pontificate about how mercy is a losing quality in The Expanse. Both the message of these sequences, and the relation to then-current events, are utterly obvious to the point that these scenes really detract from the episode, and the early part of the season, as a whole.
But when the Enterprise crew is just fighting off a pirate attack? Or spelunking their way through a giant metal sphere hidden in a cloaked part of space? Or having to stay close to the pirate vessel despite an ongoing firefight? That’s all pretty thrilling stuff that “Anomaly” does well. Sure, sometimes the overcharged musical stings and the way everyone seems so dang severe now feel over the top, but the nuts and bolts of these sequences are good, and tied to clear goals, which makes them more propulsive than the rest of the episode.
It’s also nice to see Hoshi getting something to do for the first time in what seems like forever. Between her translating the pirate inventory so that the crew can find their stuff in the sphere, to her recognizing the Xindi markings within it, to the way she’s able to download most of the Xindi database from their pirate pursuers, it’s nice to see a member of what has become the B-team getting a little of the spotlight.
Otherwise, Enterprise still does some very Enterprise things, like gratuitously focusing on a young female corporal while the gang is changing into their evac suits, or putting too fine a point on Trip and T’Pol’s “Vulcan neural pressure treatment” creating sexual tension, or having Scott Bakula play a laughable combination of anger and seriousness that he doesn't really have the gravitas for.
Still, when Enterprise focuses on the mission, and the dogfights and intraship skirmishes that go with it, it’s a better show. That’s not necessarily what I want from Star Trek. A well done interrogation of how proto-Federation morality holds up in a lawless frontier is more my speed (and something that Discovery attempted more than a decade later). But if Enterprise isn’t capable of that, or at least not capable of doing it well, then the least it can do is keep us entertained with more of this nonstop, reasonably tense action.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2019-07-18T20:20:07Z
[7.6/10] “Talk less, fight more,” to paraphrase Aaron Burr (or his fictionalized equivalent), is not a bad mantra for Star Trek: Enterprise. Dialogue has never been the show’s strong suit. So as odd as it seems to have a Star Trek show more focused on fisticuffs and fireworks than high-minded meditations on diplomacy and philosophy, it may be playing to *Enterprise*s strengths.
Because the truth is that when you have the crew of Enterprise fighting off a pirate invasion, or trawling through an alien storehouse, or getting into a firefight with an alien ship, Enterprise is pretty enjoyable! I still contend it doesn't especially feel like Star Trek (or at least feels closer to the movie version of Trek that was bigger on excitement and less interested in the sort of thoughtful themes the T.V. series had time for), but it’s something that the show’s editors and effects team and camera crew is good at, which is more than you can say for the show’s script.
That said, however much I might bitch about lines here and there, the show does a good job at keeping the proceedings interesting, even apart from the skirmishes with an alien ship in the anomaly cluster of the Alpha Quadrant (I assume?). As I’ve said in prior write-ups, a lot of Star Trek episodes work best when the crew has clear goals. Here, the episode doesn't skimp on that.
Enterprise’s crew’s mission is clear: recover their lost gear before they run out of gas, track down the alien pirates who stole it; download the Xindi database from those same pirates. It helps add a directness to everything going on, where despite some of the “no, you guys, Enterprise is different now!* stuff, you can appreciate the show having a pretty clear throughline of cause and effect from minute one to minute forty-three.
The big problems are two-fold. For one, the show’s effects are just corny to a viewer in 2019. I try not to judge Enterprise too harshly on that front, anymore than I would judge The Original Series for putting a little dog in a cheap halloween costume and calling it an alien in the 1960s.
Still, willing suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain when you have Archer dealing with an obviously computer generated mid-air coffee spill, or a big lump roaming through the decks and tossing crewman flat on their asses. The idea that the laws of physics don’t work the same way in The Expanse is a novel one, especially when it means the usual warp equations don’t work, but the way the show tries to represent that idea is downright laughable in the modern era.
The other problem is that, apart from a reasonably tight story of the Enterprise crew losing their stuff, getting back, and then getting more still from the people who robbed them, “Anomaly” utterly belabors the point that Archer and everyone else is going to have to break some of their moral codes to get along in the expanse. The conversations between Archer and the captured pirate are completely and totally facepalm-worthy.
We get it, Enterprise! The Expanse calls for a more rough and tumble form of diplomacy than was possible in the rest of the Alpha Quadrant! And Archer in particular might be slipping morally and ethically given the demands of this region of space and his own frustrations over his home planet being attacked. There’s something to be said for the show dramatizing American anger circa 2003, and a sense of being wiling to torture prisoners and do other boundary-violating things that the shining city upon a hill would once shudder to countenance, at least publicly.
But as usual, the show makes that point with thunderous directness, making sure the audience understands in no uncertain terms that Archer is losing his moral compass when he suffocates the pirate for information, and having the same pirate pontificate about how mercy is a losing quality in The Expanse. Both the message of these sequences, and the relation to then-current events, are utterly obvious to the point that these scenes really detract from the episode, and the early part of the season, as a whole.
But when the Enterprise crew is just fighting off a pirate attack? Or spelunking their way through a giant metal sphere hidden in a cloaked part of space? Or having to stay close to the pirate vessel despite an ongoing firefight? That’s all pretty thrilling stuff that “Anomaly” does well. Sure, sometimes the overcharged musical stings and the way everyone seems so dang severe now feel over the top, but the nuts and bolts of these sequences are good, and tied to clear goals, which makes them more propulsive than the rest of the episode.
It’s also nice to see Hoshi getting something to do for the first time in what seems like forever. Between her translating the pirate inventory so that the crew can find their stuff in the sphere, to her recognizing the Xindi markings within it, to the way she’s able to download most of the Xindi database from their pirate pursuers, it’s nice to see a member of what has become the B-team getting a little of the spotlight.
Otherwise, Enterprise still does some very Enterprise things, like gratuitously focusing on a young female corporal while the gang is changing into their evac suits, or putting too fine a point on Trip and T’Pol’s “Vulcan neural pressure treatment” creating sexual tension, or having Scott Bakula play a laughable combination of anger and seriousness that he doesn't really have the gravitas for.
Still, when Enterprise focuses on the mission, and the dogfights and intraship skirmishes that go with it, it’s a better show. That’s not necessarily what I want from Star Trek. A well done interrogation of how proto-Federation morality holds up in a lawless frontier is more my speed (and something that Discovery attempted more than a decade later). But if Enterprise isn’t capable of that, or at least not capable of doing it well, then the least it can do is keep us entertained with more of this nonstop, reasonably tense action.