Review

Ent: Countdown is an amazing action thriller, a wonderful climax to the Xindi arc. Yet another great character dies... Hayes. And we're left with yet another cliffhanger. But overall, I didn't really care because the episode was just so much of a fun ride. I complained in my last review about the reptilians and insectoids being shown as too stereotypically evil with the single exception of the one reptilian officer who questioned the sphere builders. I was pleased to see that the insectoids were beginning to question the sphere builders as well at the end of this episode. This means that only Dolim is a ridiculous, overzealous, arrogant moron and not the entire reptilian and insectoid Xindi species. The Xindi arc comes to a head here, of course. The space battle shown here is even more spectacular than any of the previous ones. We don't know the aquatics very well, but the destruction of their ship was downright sad. As much a loss as Hayes and Degra were. There were two scenes in particular where (good guy) Xindi ships were destroyed that were unbelievably visually impressive. And of course the way that Hayes died is an interesting point of discussion as well. It's always nice to see that 22nd century technology isn't infallible. I was annoyed that the transporter was sufficient to beam in four people at once, but the episode kind of redeemed itself when Hayes was able to be shot during transport. I'm not sure how all the mechanics of that work out, but I'm sufficiently convinced it's at least possible, even if the same thing happened to Archer (among other people) earlier in the series and he wasn't hurt. A final remark, Linda Park did an excellent job playing Hoshi in this episode and I thought it was an excellent use of her character, for once.