Newsgroup: it.fan.startrek
Titolo: ENT - The Expanse: Starship Troopers

http://www.scoopme.com/tv/articles/default.asp?article_id=107800
spoiler
by CJ Carter
5/22/2003 
GO TO EPISODE SYNOPSIS 
 
I gots to tell ya, gentle readers, that I still haven't made up my mind on
this episode. It wasn't bad. It wasn't great. Was it good? I don't know.
I've watched it twice, and even indulged myself to sleep on it, and I still
haven't made up my mind. It's a little infuriating. There is so much going
on that I'm finding it hard to tie it all into a neat little bow.
The major point of the episode is that it's going to spin Enterprise into a
new direction. Whether it's a creative new direction with B&B still at the
writing helm remains to be seen. 
B&B have said that they looked to the motion pictures for inspiration. They
specifically looked at Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the one with the
whales and time travel) as well as Star Trek: First Contact (the one with
the Borg). In both these cases, an alien ship directly threatens Earth and
thus raises the stakes. (I'm guessing we should be happy that they didn't
choose Star Trek: The Motion Picture as their model for the same plot
device.)
Now, spinning Enterprise in a new direction is hardly a new plan in the
scheme of Trek shows. When DS9 got the Defiant, the show was ratcheted up a
notch to being more action oriented. Instead of being bound to the space
station or to Bajor, the crew was able to go out into space and act,
instead of react. With Voyager, the story shift away (thankfully) from the
weak-ass Kazon to the more (theoretically) challenging Borg made the show
much more watchable. Enterprise is choosing a riskier path in that this
isn't a simple evolution or a reintroduction of an established threat. No,
this is a reset to the series to make it something more than it is now. 
In some ways this is Bobby Ewing coming out of the shower. While we keep
the character development we've had to this point, there is a distinct
feeling that this is potentially a new series. 
In some ways this is punctuated by the style of attack. This isn't STIV or
STVIII - where there are targeted attacks that are either going to destroy
the biosphere, or at least the camp where future is about to be made. No,
this is much more like Starship Troopers where an alien entity launches a
big rock at the planet without anything approaching exact targeting. It was
a terrorist attack.
Think about it. You have a supposedly manned probe with multiple weapons,
but all it does is cut a swath of destruction from the Florida panhandle
down to South America -- boiling up a lot of water in the process. If
you're going to attack, then you do something useful -- like destroy space
docks, the base at Utopia Planitia, San Fran-freakin'-cisco where Starfleet
is based. You target entire cities to cause the most casualties. You wage
war. But no, the attack amounts to little more than a car bomb.
I don't think the Xindi are ultimately responsible for this. It smells more
like a frame job by Humanoid Figure. It makes sense. The Suliban haven't
been anything but disappointments on a level not seen since the Kazon. His
goal has been a mucking around with the timeline so that Enterprise's
mission fails. And he is annoyed that someone else is fiddling with the
timeline? Puleeze. Doesn't it seem more likely that Osama bin Humanoid
Figure arranged to have stuffed a (dead?) Xindi into an otherwise
autonomous probe, and attacked Earth just enough to get them to take care
of the Xindi problem -- if there even is a Xindi problem? Enterprise goes
off on an ill-advised mission (leaving a lot of space free of the
meddlesome Archer) that might just result in the original goal of getting
rid of that interfering ship and its captain.
But it's not just this ongoing plot that is changing. No, it looks like
some of the characters are changing as well. The most obvious is Trip. His
good-ol'-boy stripes are coming through, and wants to go totally medieval
on the Xindi. Like Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers, he's pretty
happy-go-lucky until his planet and family are victims. Then he changes.
He's now just a vengeance machine. Scary.
Archer is changed as well, but less so. While he now feels the weight of a
planet, and of history, on his shoulders, that's not the most important
change. No, for much of the episode, his hair flops tiredly across his
forehead. He's now the WWII sub commander who doesn't have time to keep up
with by-the-book grooming. He's in it for the long haul, come what may.
He's prepared for Enterprise to become Das Boot in space. Going into the
Delphic Expanse, he's the U-Boot captain trying to fight an enemy and keep
his crew alive in hostile territory with little hope of help coming in time
if something goes wrong.
And then there's T'Pol. Poor conflicted T'Pol. It's not surprising that
Soval would try to do an end run and send her back to Vulcan -- if not for
re-education, then simply to get her out of harm's way. (Soval sending the
psychiatrist to Archer under false pretenses makes me think the former is
more likely than the later.) It's also not surprising that Phlox beat her
around the head with his speech about loyalty. After all, she has
definitely been more loyal to Archer than to the Vulcan High Command in the
past two years. What was surprising was the amount of groveling T'Pol had
to endure in order to convince Archer to let her stay.
Yeah, that was a weird scene. On first viewing, I felt kind of dirty. It
almost seemed like T'Pol trying to not let her man go off to war alone. But
on second viewing, I grew angrier with Archer for forcing T'Pol to have to
demean herself to begging -- using arguments that we've heard in previous
episodes (e.g. you get used to the smell). At the very least, when Archer
left the ready room and changed course away from Vulcan, he should have
told Lieutenant Commander T'Pol to resume her station. That would have told
everyone that T'Pol was now Starfleet. Besides, if she's no longer in the
Vulcan High Command structure, she's going to need a rank on Enterprise --
otherwise she becomes nothing more than the respected, but unranked, cousin
of similarly catsuited Seven of Nine.
What hurt the episode most was that there wasn't enough time given to the
characters. There was a chopieness to it all. Perhaps that was designed to
increase the tension, but it seemed more the result of the useless Duras
storyline.
Props have to be given for some of the best space battles yet done on the
show, (with an obvious nod to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), but except
for establishing that the photon torpedoes work, this Klingon subplot took
more away from what could have been a great dramatic episode than it gave
in action-packed eye candy.
OK. I've written something like 1,200 words now, and I still don't know how
I feel about this episode. Maybe… maybe it will be the beginning of
something great. On the other hand, it might just be Voyager II: Stuck in
the Delphic Expanse. I just hope the Hirogen don't show up.
TIDBITS, IRKS, and QUIRKS 
Warp 5 for seven weeks? Is this the same ship that almost shook itself
apart when doing warp 5 for a few minutes? 
Archer telling the crew to, "Hold on," during Mayweather's loop maneuver?
What's that all about? Are the inertial dampers off-line? 
Since it's a given that Trip and Archer are really good friends, why didn't
Archer and Trip speak of Trip's missing sister, Elisabeth, as if Jon knew
her? Or at least knew of her? 
Archer to T'Pol: "I need your support, not your damned skepticism!" Wow. 
Why didn't Phlox confirm the credentials of Dr. Fer'at before letting him
examine Archer? 
Archer to Phlox: "I'd like you to escort our guest to the airlock." (Gee, I
hope there's something attached to it on the other side, hee hee) 
Starfleet isn't military? They certainly aren't purely civilian. So, what
are they? 
Archer's hands on T'Pol's shoulders was inappropriate. It's like he's
trying to convince his girlfriend to stay behind while he goes off to fight
the Nazis. 
Well. That's it for reviews of new episodes for Enterprise here at ScoopMe!
But that's not the end of me. Oh no. There will be a season wrap up next
week, and I expect all of y'all to show up for that. Until then, as always,
please rate this week's review and jump on over to the message boards for
your thoughts (and judging from last week, y'all aren't shy about your
opinions). Hailing frequencies are open.
-- 
Jolan Tru
Filippo "Hytok" Simone - 
http://www.startrekitaliamagazine.it/
*L'oracolo Romulano di Sunnydale* - 
http://www.ussexcalibur.it/
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/hyterdeflok/
 - 
http://uncino.free.fr/

SPOILER
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Ho sempre cercato di avere un atteggiamento non pregiudizialmente
negativo verso ENT, ignorando volentieri anche tutte le incongruenze,
ma questo pilot (piu' che un cliffhanger) della terza serie non mi convince
davvero per niente.
Un'astronave della federazione in viaggio in un settore quasi inesplorato...
ma come, 7 stagioni di Voyager non sono bastate?
L'antefatto ricorda molto l'11 settembre (una strage immensa fatta senza
apparente ragione da un nemico sconosciuto). L'enterprise in missione
vendicatrice fa tanto bush (rigorosamente minuscolo :) e i suoi marines.
Ritengo probabile che gli ascolti in usa salgano parecchio... in fondo
quello
che l'americano medio vuole vedere in TV sono altri americani che fanno
il c..o al mondo. O meglio ancora, all'universo intero.
E anche le continue scene di nudo (presenti non in The Expanse, ma in
Bounty) sono tanto gratuite da aver stancato.
Davvero, sto rivedendo i miei giudizi: comincio a non poterne piu' anch'io
di Enterprise.

di Enterprise.
  E ti ci sono volute due stagioni? ;->>>
  Ciao :-)
  Massimo
  Nell'indirizzo, sostituire "micio" con "mc"

   E ti ci sono volute due stagioni? ;->>>
Si, quelle che non ha visto.
Ciao.
---
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 Si, quelle che non ha visto.
Ma andatevene tutti... (si scherza, eh, ma non siate sempre cosi'
aggressivi!)


 aggressivi!)
Affatto, hai solo dato l'impressione di dare dei giudizi preventivi (Come si
fà a dire che in Bounty ci sono delle scene di nudo?).
Ciao^^__^^.
