Transformers 2 vs. Terminator 4
Essential sci-fi reading list?
Brandon Routh no longer under contarct to play SUPERMAN
Megan Fox v. Michael Bay on the quality of Transformers
Jul 03 | Leading sci-fi website, Totalscifionline.com has teamed up with Star Trek Magazine to find out who is the best villain in Star Trek. Together, they want to know the diabolical masterminds who have sent a shiver down your spine and set your heart pounding and the evil geniuses who make it seem good to e bad. The top Star Trek villain will appear on a special commemorative Star Trek
Magazine cover, to be revealed later this year. Your vote could also win you year's subscription to Star Trek Magazine.For information on how to cast your vote, go here
Jul 02 | Doug Drexler's Drex Files blog psoted a couple of making-of for two images in Pocket Books 2010 Ships of the Line calendar. You can see Greg Stewart's "Operation Return", and "We Come In Peace For All Mankind" by Robert Wilde.
Jul 02 | Company of Angels (CoA), which was co-founded in 1959 by actor Leonard Nimoy, is celebrating its 50th Anniversary as Los Angeles' oldest non profit professional theater now headquartered at the historic Alexandria Hotel in downtown LA. CoA is readying to celebrate this milestone in the history of Los Angeles Theater - with a prestigious Charity Awards Gala slated for October 17, 2009 which will honor actor Leonard Nimoy for his role as a founding member as well as veteran actor Robert Ellenstein. "I'm looking forward to celebrating Company of Angels' 50th Anniversary Award Ceremony and Gala." Nimoy says of this special event in which he is proud to be a part of Check out the official website to learn more about The Company of Angels
Jul 01 | There may be no new Boston Legal episodes, but William Shatner is keeping very busy these days. In addition to his new talk show, Raw Nerve, he took time out to film a new TV spot for Priceline, titled Lighten Up. The clip is viewable on the Priceline Travel Blog
Jun 28 | Eight weeks in, Star Trek still drew audiences in eighth ($3.6 million this weekend, $246.2 million overall).
:
STAR TREK: The Verdict. Rate J.J. Abrams's STAR TREK!
By O. Deus / 00:01, 23 April 2004 / ENTERPRISE Reviews
Synopsis: Enterprise tries to recover from its pounding by stealing a warp coil. The
Xindi Council bickers and T'Pol has to learn to 'just say no'.
Review: The damage in the title of this episode refers to both the physical damage we can see in the tears and devastation on the Enterprise hull and the moral damage sustained by Archer and members of his crew over the term of the Xindi mission. It's an episode that lingers over the damage Archer, T'Pol and even the Xindi see in themselves as much as it does over the lightless and beaten interiors of Enterprise itself.
The scene of the Xindi council calling off the attack early on dampens far too much of the tension too quickly, as it might have been much more helpful to keep the audience wondering why the Xindi called off the attack and whether they might
return for a while. Still, "Damage" does a credible job of showing the beating Enterprise has taken and closes as it began with a devastated ship not healed by any quick fix or technobabble solution.
While STAR TREK, particularly on TV, will never top the sense of devastation Enterprise experienced after Khan's attack, crystalized in the awful image of Scotty standing helplessly in the turbolift with a bloody body cradled in his arms, "Damage" provides
some excellent... well, damage. The exploding EPS conduit over the heads of the senior officers followed by debris raining down during the briefing is a particularly nice touch; Archer looking over the covered bodies in sickbay is a more understated moment, but arguably a more effective one that hardens both his determination and pain.
The truly inspired touch, though, is the damaged alien vessel with the warp coil that Enterprise must raid in order to stop the Xindi weapon. Unlike DS9's much-hyped "In The Pale Moonlight," Archer faces a genuinely impossible moral dilemma because circumstances give him no choice but to carry out an immoral act against innocent victims. This puts it closer to the depth of great TOS episodes like "A Private Little War," that require an immoral act for a pragmatic outcome.
When Archer's team raids the alien vessel, it visually suggests the raids on
Enterprise in "Anomaly" and "Rajiin," and thus the victims become the victimizers, as happens all too often today. Archer's final confrontation with the alien captain is brief but effective. Throughout the course of an agonizing year Archer has gone from being naive and arrogantly optimistic to a hard-driven and wounded man who acts not out of hope but pragmatism. The scientist and explorer has become the unwilling soldier.
All in all "Damage" effectively shows the price Enterprise has paid and the way
in which Archer and the crew respond to it. However the other two stories circling
around the episode, namely T'Pol Gone Wild and the Xindi council debating Archer's
claims, are a good deal weaker. The Xindi Council scenes in general to tend to deflate too much of the tension and claustrophobic atmosphere that makes for the episode's strongest scenes. Brannon Braga and Rick Berman should have learned from George Lucas's THE PHANTOM MENACE, which demonstrated that political bickering in government offices doesn't make for the best drama. Worse yet, the Xindi Council scenes represent exactly what much of "Damage" avoids, easy and quick fixes.
The Xindi Council members moving from genocide to freeing Archer and letting Enterprise go is just too implausible. Degra argues that Archer had provided proof where the Sphere Builder has not, but that is even more absurd; Archer did not prove his claims about the sphere-builders or their ambitions. All he did was prove that he might
have access to time travel, which the Xindi already know the Sphere-Builders do.
Archer did nothing to demonstrate or prove humanity's good intentions and at the same
time it's also completely implausible that Degra and the others would be so committed
to wiping out humanity without a single shred of evidence that Earth presented a threat, but just on the word of the Sphere-Builder.
Randy Oglesby continues to deliver strong performances as Degra and Tucker Smallwood is quite good too. The Sphere-Builder from the future pacing through the Xindi Council is eerie, even if her performance is so transparently malevolent that
it's absurd that anyone would take her claims seriously. Compare that to the more
subtle female shapeshifter on DS9 who didn't have to act like she was about to bake Hansel and Gretel in a giant oven to convey the presence of evil.
T'Pol's story is something else entirely. Namely an excercise in contemptible
stupidity and unforiveable ignorance. We had good reason to believe that sooner or
later TPTB would tie in something involving the anomalies and Trellium-D to T'Pol's bizarre behavior in order to get them off the hook with the STAR TREK fans Braga derides as 'Continuity Pornographers.'
But it was difficult to imagine a storyline in which we are told that Vulcans need to take drugs in order to experience emotions when in fact Vulcans experience emotions far more intense than humans--the very reason that requires them to maintain such strict control. The idea that a Vulcan needs to take drugs to experience emotions is as insane as saying that a weightlifter needs to take drugs in order to be able to put down barbells rather than to lift them up. The difficulty is in suppressing emotions, the emotions Vulcans experience all the time and must continually struggle to control using their mental disciplines. Trellium-D degrades those disciplines but those disciplines are a voluntary
excercise to begin with. It simply makes absolutely no sense at all.
Of all the aspects of STAR TREK, Vulcans have taken the worst beating from ENTERPRISE, first being cast as villains plotting to obstruct our heroes, as militarists, as
prudes, metaphorical homophobes, mind rapists and just about any nasty thing imaginable. But T'Pol's portrayal this season has really hit a whole new low. It is, of course, difficult to top the repulsive depiction of T'Pol in "Bounty," running through the halls half-undressed in a mating frenzy and having to be hunted down by Enterprise security teams, but season three has certainly been working up to it.
The bonus sexism of a woman being left in command on a ship while becoming unfocused and then hysterical, only to be relieved by the male Captain is yet another of
ENTERPRISE's thoughtful additions to the STAR TREK legacy that we will undoubtedly
treasure for years to come. Somewhere Harlan Ellison, who has spent countless hours over the past few decades shrilly complaining because Gene Roddenberry wouldn't let him portray a crew members as drug users and dealers is undoubtedly quite happy right now. Perhaps next season we can look forwards to Trip tripping out on E or Archer on crack? After all, we've now opened the door and we might as well step all the way through.
"Damage" is strongest when it focuses on the moral and physical dilemmas
of the Enterprise crew, rather than the more soap operatic elements. Unfortunately, along with the physical and emotional damage to the Enterprise and its crew, the episode suffers from its own damage as well.
Next week: There are only 5 new episodes left. Count em, that's 5 new episodes.
| Recent Reviews | ||
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... you took the words right out of my mouth. Imagine that. 
There are a few things I would add because there WAS alot going on there, some of which was often overshadowed by other things, but I will say this:
THE GOOD:
1.) Hoshi/Travis - one of the RARE moments when these 2, the youngest members of the Bridge crew, were together working on the analysis of the Xindi-Aquatic escape pod.
I wished there was more dialog, but the 2 characters (and both actors) looked like little lost puppies in that scene and it actually would have been nice to have that scene go on longer to emphasize the little lost puppy feeling there, because THAT is what they should be feeling IF (for those who obsess that Trek should be "real"), you want "realism".
THE OKAY (needs work)
2.) The conversation about "ethics" between Archer and Phlox. This was also something that needs to happen more often and needs some more substance, but at least it was inserted.
See... Phlox, like T'Pol, needs to be a commentary character. Certainly in season 1 both were. But they have been sortof dragged along with this plot that really has little or no impact on their own societies, thus freeing them to sympathize and empathize with Humanity. However they need to be shown distinct from Humanity in order to observe and comment on how they see Humanity reacting to this.
THE BAD
3.) The negation of the contrarian position "by reason of insanity" of the one giving that position.
The contrary point of view has been one of my pet peeves in ENT. And it can be subtle or it can be impassioned as we saw with the resident Vulcan. However in this latter case, because the "passion" was released, not due to any true passion or concern, but was due to the overlay of a plot device substance, then it negates the arguments.
Plot device external factor substances that impact a character are part and parcel of Trek. However such was done to generally reveal something about that character - mostly removing "inhibitions". However in this case, it comes at the price of making a critical, inpassioned argument against a course of action, moot.
THE UGLY
1.) And so after Phlox determines that this character is a druggy, what does he do? Gives her a snort of a 22nd century Methadone-equivalent and sends her back to the Bridge.
Despite the fact that Commander Charles B. Tucker III was not only the original First Officer of this ship, but he has proven his ability at doing the job and has had more than enough experience. So there was NO NEED to NOT relieve this character from duty until her condition was stablized. I don't give a sh*t whether the sky is falling in the ship. The fact that it WAS in the conditon that it was in was HER FAULT. So what do you do? Send her right back to work. That makes lots of sense. 
(and I hope people are not going to argue to me that the 18 people killed 3 missing out of almost 80 on board (which assumes a few less since they lost some this season) that were lost, would somehow make her SO "critical" to ANYTHING to do with the ship... and also don't argue to me that Trip is the Engineer and can't somehow direct his team from the Bridge, if he needs to really be there much, since certainly, Archer was doing a "Janeway" as people are wont to say around here, down on his back helping to repair the ship like everyone else)
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"I think the show talked to people through the characters. They're stories that speak to the heart. They talk about love, they talk about friendship, they talk about loyalty, they talk about patriotism, exploration, curiosity, reaching out... And I think all those things still touch people. Even when you look at a 30-year old show, it still has something to say." - D.C. Fontana, Sci Fi Channel Special Edition TOS 1998
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Outer Space. The last frontier.
These are the trips of the Star Trek Enterprise.
Its 5-year plan...
Calls for us to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations.
To boldly fly where no man has gone in space.
Patrick Stewart on SNL 2/5/94
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