User Reviews

Commander Tucker heads the Enterprise to Andoria and Ambassador Soval contacts Commander Shran that is hidden with a small fleet in a nebula. He discloses the intention of Administrator V'Las of attacking Andoria but the skeptical Shran does not believe on his words and kidnaps Soval, submitting him to torture. Meanwhile in Vulcan Captain Archer, T'Pol and T'Pau are attacked by Vulcan soldiers while transporting the Kir'Shara to the High Command. V'Las is questioned by Minister Kuvak that is not convinced that the Andorians have the Xindi technology. V'Las orders the Vulcan attack to the Andorian fleet, but the Enterprise stations between the two forces expecting to avoid the battle.

"Kir'Shara" is an excellent conclusion to the saga of Archer with the Syranites. The story is engaging, full of action and suspense and very well developed; the Administrator V'Las is a despicable villain and the forged evidences for the attack to Andoria seems to be inspired in invasion of Iraq in 2003. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Kir'Shara"

Archer, who is now part Vulcan, finds the artifact as the looney tunes Vulcan leader takes his world down a garden path to war with the Andorians. T'Pol is captured and then reunited with Archer and T'Pau. Enterprise ends up in the middle of a battle between the Vulcans and the Andorians. There is a lot of torture and negotiating. Battle fatigue seems to permeate all members of these encounters. There is a surprising development concerning T'Pol at the conclusion. These three part stories work very well.

With the final season, the showrunners tried to halt the impending decline with double episodes and trilogies to entice viewers to tune in again. Episode 9 now concludes the trilogy about the tensions between Vulcan and the renegade Syrrannites as well as the impending attack on Andoria. And when it comes to Andoria, of course, Shran isn't far away - after all, he seems to be the only high-ranking officer the planet can spare. Although Shran never gets tired of emphasizing that Archer now owes him two, he and all of Andoria actually owe Archer, the Enterprise and Starfleet a lot now. In the end it is Archer again who saves the day and with it all of Andoria.

Archer and the crew uncover a plot within the Vulcan High Command and manage to prevent a military escalation and war between Vulcan and Andoria just in time. Tucker is allowed to play captain for a while and, for a change, has the situation largely under control and makes the right decisions to prevent the Vulcans from launching a major attack on Andoria. Meanwhile, Archer and T'Pol try to hand over Surak's writings to the High Command in order to persuade them to abandon the path of military confrontation and return to logic and reason. Speaking of logic: Why the High Command's henchmen try to stop Archer, T'Pol and T'Pau with fists and archaic-looking weapons instead of simply using phasers set to stun remains a mystery once again. Most scenes and conflicts in Star Trek could be avoided anyway if the phasers were simply used directly instead of long persuasion and hand-to-hand combat. If you don't cause fatal injuries with it anyway, there's actually no reason not to use this weapon directly at any time.

Unfortunately, T'Pol isn't much help during the whole operation. Her drug problems have turned her into an emotional wreck. Her logical conclusions, her rational advice, her cool head... she's just a shadow of her former self. At first, she was the only officer on board the Enterprise who didn't play the bold, trigger-happy cowboy like the rest of the senior officers. But then she became more and more of a sex symbol and her new calling was to give Tucker neuro-pressure massages. And finally the decline: drug addiction and emotional instability.

By the way: There must be many women on Vulcan who have the same name. Given the way of naming with a T followed by a short syllable (T'Pol, T'Pau, T'Les or T'Pring, T'Lyn, T'Rina), creativity in finding a name seems to be quite limited.

Archer recovers the Kir'Shara.

This is an enjoyable episode and trilogy that feels like a bit of continuity maintenance within the series and another attempt at fan service. Its success is rather hit and miss for me, but mainly good.

The story is strong, compelling and works well as a thrilling dramatic presentation. Both plots that unfold (on Vulcan and in space) are entertaining, with lots on interesting things going on. However, when thinking about the history of the franchise, for all the continuity issues it solves, it also creates more problems at the same time. I won't go into specifics, as I'd be venturing into Trekkie territory if I did.

Performances are all good, but the character-writing has a lot to be desired, particularly with some of the Vulcans like V'Las. However, I won't dwell on things as this has been a blight on all four series of Enterprise. Hopefully, all the Vulcans presented in the remaining episodes will be the established types and we can pretend a lot of what we saw didn't happen. Perhaps in that early episode where Archer lost gravity in the shower, he actually banged his head on the ceiling and we soon see him step out and reveal everything since has been a dream. No more emotional Vulcans please writers, learn from past mistakes.

Speaking of Archer, he was the human equivalent of a white-saviour trope in his role towards the Vulcans in this story. In fact, it seems quite comical that considering the magnitude of his achievements in Enterprise he has never attained the status of God or at least High Protector or the Galaxy.

Robert Foxworth is most likely the worst call for acting a Vulcan. He is constantly angry, emotional, illogocal, smug and lies all the time. I'm aware that being a liar belongs to the role. But being this emotional in the role of a supreme leader of Vulcan is not. I really don't get why the director didn't intervene and tell him to play a Vulcan, not a Klingon.

Oh where to begin? Most obviously, Foxworth's maniacally emotional performance, which should have him judged insane by Vulcan standards. Not that he's alone: Blalock dishes out quite a few emotional scenes herself, though not as intense. Suffice it to say that her character is consistently more emotional than Bakula's captain. And what happened to T-Pau's accent? This might as well be Abrams Trek.

But why should we even complain: in a show that's full of non-canon details, and frequently scripted straight out of Generic TV Dialog, there's nothing here that evokes TOS or TNG .... and there's plenty to continue the worst aspect of DS9, as the season-long arc means that episodes rarely have a real conclusion. At best, we might feel compelled to see the next one -- but even when some major plot point does resolve (as it does here), it does so with an I-guess-so shrug. Even the worst TOS Trek -- and there was plenty -- knew how to end an episode.

Saving graces include a few performances; Jeff Combs is always worthwhile. But there's only so much to be done when the plot is a mess, and the writing just isn't there. Nice sets and CGI though, and the makeup and costumes are always terrific.