Plot – If your standard Trek involves time travel, action on a spaceship, future history and a philosophical speech from the Captain then Shockwave Part II ticks all of the boxes. The trouble is all of those things have been done better elsewhere. For time travel, check out Relativity or Trials and Tribble-ations. For ship bound action watch The Killing Game or Basics. And I’m sure we’ve all got out favourite moments when a Captain makes a speech and I’m willing to bet that not many would cite this episode as theirs (prove me wrong). Shockwave Part I dared to suggest a huge shake up for this show; real consequences to their adventuring and the possibility that their work would end in the destruction of humanity. Shockwave Part II undoes all of that and allows them to go on their merry way as if none of it ever happened. Definitely standard Berman Trek.
Character – There’s a great moment in the cold open where all the emotional men are getting ready to attack the Suliban, T’Pol calmly orders all of their preparations cancelled because there are 30 armed vessels targeting their warp core. She doesn’t have all the answers but she is coolly in control of the situation whereas her fellow officers are ready to fight and get killed. I shouldn’t take every moment of positive female representation and compare it to the archaic treatment of women in 60s Trek (or even late 80s Trek) but the truth is these scenes simply would not take place on TOS and that is something to be celebrated. Perhaps Kirk would learn something if Uhura asserted herself every now and again. I don’t think T’Pol is the most progressive female character in Trek (for me that would come down to Kira or Dax) but the fact that her authority is without question means that Trek is absolutely where it needs to be when it comes to a fair and balanced representation of the genders…
…and then Hoshi loses her shirt crawling through the bowels of Enterprise and ends up in Reed’s quarters flashing her chest. And then there is a scene where T’Pol is screaming ‘no!’ and requires Trip and Reed to save her. Oh man it was going so well.
Do we ever find out who Daniels is? He seems to be a character that pops up in all the wrong moments to deliver mysterious exposition (does that even make sense?) or a suspenseful portent of the future but when it comes down to the nuts of bolts of who he is as a person, I am at a complete loss. The performance is fine, but the context of where he is really from, who he represents and the life that he leads away from all these temporal shenanigans is absent. As such I find it hard to care about him, given he is a plot device rather than a living, breathing person.
Performance – I can’t get behind Archer at the climax because whilst he is explaining the virtues of humanity to the Vulcans, Bakula comes across as being utterly smug and superior. The trouble is so do the Vulcans. It’s a smug-off.
Production – Kudos to the impressive shots of Archer and Daniels heading into the ruined library on the devastated Earth. It’s not quite perfect - because Archer looks like he has been superimposed onto a cartoon when they head inside – but it is an ambitious attempt to add some real scope to the production.
Best moment – Archer, standing in a library in the far future, with books that could tell him all about the future of the Quadrant that he helped to set up.
T’Pol standing up for humanity at the climax. The one positive development to come out of the first season.
Worst moment – The faux tension that is ramped up between Starfleet HQ and the Vulcans because of Archer’s disappearance and the Enterprise’s failure to return home. The assumption is made that T’Pol has been kidnapped, which is so ridiculous and unlikely and seems put in just to cause diplomatic tension. These scenes lack the sort of dynamism and vivid characters that are needed to bring them alive. The actors are giving it their best but it just feels like hot air and empty words. The conclusion of this episode that sees the Vulcan’s continue their vendetta against Enterprise and their wish for it to be recalled, showing that nothing has been achieved and that there is still this interminable tension to be resolved. Honestly, the human/Vulcan rivalry on this show is the one thing that really turns me off from it. It brings out the worst in the human characters and it makes the Vulcans look petty and argumentative for the sake of it. It is lose/lose. ‘You’re pathetic!’ yells Trip at Sauval, which should have earned him a court martial.
I wish they hadn’t done that – The Suliban were never going to be the greatest threat to the Trek universe but it is here where their fate as an ineffectual villainous race is cemented when they outnumber Enterprise 30 to 1 and yet despite their numbers on the ship still manage to be tricked and defeated.
A reason to watch this episode again – So you watched Enterprise series and weren’t particularly impressed…or you were very impressed (although the general reaction does seem to have been the former) and now we have arrived at season two where the show has a chance to show deliver a more focussed, confident version of itself. TOS did it with Amok Time. TNG had The Child, which whilst having a terrible plot added some stylish new elements to TNG that helped push it in the right direction. DS9 scored a massive hit with the political thriller The Homecoming. VOY (of course) disappointed with the dreary episode The 37s but you can see that the writers are trying to do something bold (land the ship and ask the crew if they want to stay on this planet). How does Enterprise fare in the second season opener stakes? They should have started by getting rid of that dreadful theme song, which was universally loathed. Perhaps that was a sign that the producers were going to dig their heels in and suggest that their way of making this show was going to stick. Good for them, it is their show, but it has gone down in history that the first two years of Enterprise are basically the franchise with its feet stuck in cement. All the other shows attempted to grow and learn from their initial mistakes in season two and all of them (even Voyager) succeeded. Enterprise is happy to deliver more of the same. Shockwave Part Two is…okay. That’s what the show seems to be aiming for at this point. Okay. The politics on show aren’t remotely believable, but the special effects are imaginative. The regulars aren’t setting the show on fire, but the temporal jiggery pokery is intriguing. The Suliban are a dreadfully dull race, but there’s some action that perked up my attention. There’s something daring-do about watching the crew of Enterprise coming together to take over the ship, although it does feel (almost beat for beat) like similar episodes of TNG and VOY (with Berman and Braga in the hot seat that is hardly a surprise). It’s nice to know they can pull it together (the crew) when necessary. Shockwave Part I promised to be about something and to have consequences for the future, Shockwave Part II is essentially about putting all the toys back in the box neatly until they need to be brought out again, albeit with a few hints about the Federation and Archer’s role in that. It’s stock Trek, well executed but lacking true ambition. There’s plenty of action but very little of substance and absolutely no satisfying answers.
**1/2 out of *****
1 comment:
"The trouble is so do the Vulcans. It’s a smug-off."
And therin lies the problem. This is essentially NCIS in Space, but the franchise is at odds with that kind of grandiosity and machismo. You can get away with it on any cop show. Or on Stargate, where jingoism is the order of the day. But when you switch to Star Trek you expect a morality play which is absent here. Plus the Vulcans are one-dimensional scolds. Archer is flat and the Vulcans are flat, so they just cancel each other out.
There is no one to root for here. Defenders of the show like to point out that it is more human and realistic than the other Star Treks, but it's simply nihilistic.
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