Enterprise encounters a cloaked ship following them and Trip Tucker pays them a visit.
I did quite enjoy this one because it captured the spirit of the original series with Trip's interaction with with the Xyrillians. You could imagine James T Kirk in this situation and how funny it would have been if he had suffered the same outcome. That would have taught him not to put it about so much throughout the galaxy.
On the other hand it does have some issues. In a plot where the essential premise is someone hosting a parasitic life-form you can go two ways, horror (like Alien) where you can get into all sorts of morals and themes, or humour. The writers chose the latter, but unfortunately the humour is not quite nailed on for me. It seems quite forced at time with Tucker pretty much doing an impression of a hormonal pregnant woman and having all the jokes centred around that. Some of them don't make sense, like the notion of a Vulcan indulging in idle gossip with other crew members.
We do start to get to explore the characters a bit more in this one. There is a reasonably good encounter with the Klingons with a decent moment for T'Pol, but Jolene Blalock as of yet hasn't rally put her own stamp on the show's Vulcan character. Leonard Nimoy was so good at showing his repressed emotions in facial expressions and Tim Russ had the opportunity to display some comic and dramatic range. I hope she gets to do more than just blandly deliver lines and pout.
Archer isn't as gung-ho or tetchy in this one as he was in the previous few episodes, his standout moment being the shower scene as the gravity system fails. Tucker is the star of this episode and Connor Trinner does his best to elevate the script to be fairly entertaining.
It's a 6.5/10 for me but I round upwards.
I did quite enjoy this one because it captured the spirit of the original series with Trip's interaction with with the Xyrillians. You could imagine James T Kirk in this situation and how funny it would have been if he had suffered the same outcome. That would have taught him not to put it about so much throughout the galaxy.
On the other hand it does have some issues. In a plot where the essential premise is someone hosting a parasitic life-form you can go two ways, horror (like Alien) where you can get into all sorts of morals and themes, or humour. The writers chose the latter, but unfortunately the humour is not quite nailed on for me. It seems quite forced at time with Tucker pretty much doing an impression of a hormonal pregnant woman and having all the jokes centred around that. Some of them don't make sense, like the notion of a Vulcan indulging in idle gossip with other crew members.
We do start to get to explore the characters a bit more in this one. There is a reasonably good encounter with the Klingons with a decent moment for T'Pol, but Jolene Blalock as of yet hasn't rally put her own stamp on the show's Vulcan character. Leonard Nimoy was so good at showing his repressed emotions in facial expressions and Tim Russ had the opportunity to display some comic and dramatic range. I hope she gets to do more than just blandly deliver lines and pout.
Archer isn't as gung-ho or tetchy in this one as he was in the previous few episodes, his standout moment being the shower scene as the gravity system fails. Tucker is the star of this episode and Connor Trinner does his best to elevate the script to be fairly entertaining.
It's a 6.5/10 for me but I round upwards.