A good episode with a great cliffhanger.
You can't think too much or their decisions won't make sense but the episode begins with a good mystery as to why their shuttle ignited the atmosphere of a planet, wiping out a colony of thousands of people, which leads to the Vulcans demanding that Earth stop exploration for 10 or 20 years. (We know that would never happen because there will be more seasons, but that's ok.)
(Given the high risk, surely the colony would have dedicated shuttles to bring visitors though the explosive atmosphere, but let's ignore that too.)
Why do we need to travel in time to detect the cloaked device? The engineers have been all over that shuttle. Wouldn't it be more interesting if we see them working on the shuttle and then Trip feels something that he cannot see? It could be easy or difficult to break the cloak. Even if it's simple, that they can press a button to turn the cloak on or off, it would be a cool discovery. But that would cost more in props, CGI and screen time that "It was right were Daniels told us," which actually violates how much details that Daniels can see.
Really, we don't even need Daniels. Hoshi could recognize the writing on the device as Suliban, so Archer could decide to look into Daniel's sealed room to look for information on how to detect cloaked ships...
But, then need another way to bring Daniels in. Makes the most sense to bring him in immediately after the event that changed time. (Let's ignore that in Voyager, people can only time travel a few times (4?) but Archer and Daniels will surely each take many trips, when really, they typically only need to send messages (devices) back in time, not people.)
So Daniels tells Archer exactly where to find the Suliban and data disks that will prove that Enterprise is innocent. WHY?! Enterprise already has the device that proves it. There's no discussion of the risk. Archer says that Daniels stated that "the Suliban won't follow you" but it's impossible for Daniels to know that because the act of breaking in to get the data disks is a changes the timeline. Even if they won't follow, attacking a ship is a good way to solidify a war with the Suliban. Up until now, Archer was incidental, not an enemy of the Suliban, but this will surely make him an enemy, regardless of what the time controller wants.
It's not explained why the Suliban would have so many small ships in the area. The moon base that we saw only had one ship.
Also, writers, please always state why people can't simply transport into the Suliban ship. You had Enterprise precisely target multiple systems and their shields are down, so what's preventing transport? It only takes one line to explain but be creative.
The Suliban understand time travel, so they should readily believe that Archer has disappeared due to Daniel's interference but would need their own scans of Enterprise to prove it.
Great cliffhanger because there's no obvious solution.
1 out of 1 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink