Star Trek: Enterprise — 2x01 — Shockwave, Part II
Synopsis
With Enterprise held hostage and Archer mysteriously missing, the crew faces its biggest challenge yet.
Remarkable scenes
- Archer and Daniels exploring a destroyed 31st century.
- Archer: "The Romulan Star Empire. What's that?" Daniels: "Maybe you shouldn't be reading that."
- T'Pol: "The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible." Silik: "Does Archer agree with that opinion?" T'Pol: "It's not an opinion." Silik: "Does Archer agree with that determination?"
- The dazed and confused T'Pol.
- Hoshi's experience in the shafts that house the EPS conduits.
- Archer to Silik: "I said you're an ugly bastard!"
- Archer's infamous gazelle speech: "When I was in my early twenties on a trip to east Africa, I saw a gazelle giving birth. It was truly amazing. Within minutes the baby was standing up. Standing up on its own. A few more minutes and it was walking, and before I knew it was running alongside its mother, moving away with the herd. Humans aren't like that, ambassador. We may come from the same planet as those gazelles, but we're pretty much helpless when we're born. It takes us months before we're able to crawl, almost a full years before we can walk. Our deep space mission isn't much different. We're going to stumble, make mistakes; I'm sure more than a few before we find out footing. But we're going to learn from those mistakes. That's what being human is all about. I'm sorry you can't see that."
- T'Pol referencing the events of P'Jem as evidence that like humans, Vulcans are not perfect and that Enterprise's mission should continue.
- T'Pol: "I still don't believe in time travel." Archer: "The hell you don't."
Review
Little progress concerning the Temporal Cold War is given here. In fact, the events of this episode make guessing at who Silik's boss is even harder. If wiping out the Federation wipes out Future Guy, then I'm totally out of guesses. Sorry. It seems the Temporal Cold War is nothing but a series events like Voy: Relativity. Malicious person A starts messing with the timeline. Federation time traveler B corrects it. The main characters of the show suffer while this happens. Time Trek is most boring and I hope it doesn't last. I sincerely hope season two does something useful with the Temporal Cold War. In any case, part II of this episode was a disappointment. Besides not getting the Temporal Cold War conclusion I was expecting, the episode resorted to some of the tasteless trends established in season one. T'Pol gets tortured in revealing clothing, Hoshi loses her shirt, and Reed gets severely beaten. And I'm just not even gonna talk about Archer's rather embarrassing gazelle speech. The conclusion to this otherwise decent action episode seemed rather tasteless to me. An extra point for the episode not featuring a reset button though.