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I am so incredebly impressed with Season 3 so far, and Extinction has contiuned that trend. I especially like the moral monolouge at the end... very cool.... and bequeathing of the new title: "Star Trek: Enterprise." Gotta love LeVar Burton as director too. :)
9 from me.
I was not impressed with this episode.
A virus that transforms humans into aliens in about a minute? Seems pretty implausible to me, but I'm not a biologist. Maybe some of our members with backgrounds in medicine and biology can tell me that it's possible, but I'm skeptical.
We also see yet another example of Trek's Instant Miracle Cure (TM). Ever notice that anytime the doctor discovers how to cure the new alien disease, the patient is up and cured moments after the hypospray goes "hiss"? That's a quibble I've had with ST episodes going all the way back to TOS. At least the characters still showed some effects of the virus in this one, so I'll give partial credit here.
"Since the laws of physics don't apply in the Delphic Expanse, it's possible that the laws of biology don't apply either." That line worries me a lot. Leaves the door wide open for sloppy science in the stories. Need something impossible to happen for the plot to work? Just write it off the the Bermuda Triangle -- err, I mean, the Delphic Expanse!
"Your ship is under quarantine. Stand by for a boarding party." Alien captain dude, I think maybe you don't understand what quarantine means. :rolleyes:
Phlox needs a little more time to finish his cure. So what does Trip do? Sit quietly in orbit, pretend nothing is going on, and wait? No, he tears out of there at high warp, forcing an immediate confrontation. Seemed like a stupid move to me.
One can say the same about nanoprobe technology from the Borg.Quote:
Originally posted by Sarge
I was not impressed with this episode.
A virus that transforms humans into aliens in about a minute? Seems pretty implausible to me, but I'm not a biologist. Maybe some of our members with backgrounds in medicine and biology can tell me that it's possible, but I'm skeptical.
Quote:
"Your ship is under quarantine. Stand by for a boarding party." Alien captain dude, I think maybe you don't understand what quarantine means. :rolleyes:
Remember they had them EV suits too :D
Their sensors can detect the people with the virus as they found out about Malcolm's when he was onboard. So either way they would have found themselves in a confrontation otherwise.Quote:
Phlox needs a little more time to finish his cure. So what does Trip do? Sit quietly in orbit, pretend nothing is going on, and wait? No, he tears out of there at high warp, forcing an immediate confrontation. Seemed like a stupid move to me.
Oh yeah..i gave it an 8 :D .. it was kinda refreshing to see the actors performance as the infected aliens.
Hold on a minute. Their is a difference between Borg nanoprobes assimalting a subject in minutes (even this is only the beginning stage of the process) and a disease that turns someone into something else.
Check the movie Relic, it took the scientist a week to change into the creature. This is the problem with Trek, it moves to quickly...or slowly (Phlox being injected with Borg nanoprobes.)
We don't know how advanced this "extinct" race was that made the virus... maybe they had the ability to do this.... and they did.
That's the beautiful thing about sci-fi; the "fi" part. :)
The insta-virus and miracle cure thing bugged me, but I think it was the best acting we've seen out of Captain Quantum...ever.
I thought that this was a good episode. Maybe it'll teach
Archer to perform a more complete bio-scan before running down to a planet. Maybe the first team down should have EV suits to do up-close scans of the planet and its ecosystem.
As for the speed of the virus, this is TV. Sure it might have been more realistic if the virus took a few days to do what it did, but we have to wrap this up in one episode, maybe two.
I remember a TOS episode where Kirk is speeded up by another race needing human men (for a change :D ) to breed. And then there's the virus that killed all of the adults on that other planet, it only took one episode before McCoy Kirk figure out a cure.
And I thought the performances of the transformed crew were good. So I gave this an 8.
Worst episode ever!
Nah, I'm just kidding. It was ok. It won't make the top 10 best that's for sure.
Universal Translator of Yoshi's sure did come in handy. :D
I found it to be an excellent episode. When Enterprise is "on track" it does fine. This demonstrates that they can do something with the prequel premise and still create some good stuff. With regards to the instant change, you think that may have had something to do with the TV format? If it took a week, the entire ship would have been infected/transformed and the episode would have taken on a whole different feel (plus they already did that "slow devolution" with that anomoly that made Trip obsess about the chair). The quickness of the virus also made the Aliens that much more jumpy than they would have otherwise been (remember how fast it threatened to consume their own world). Was it a "too fast" an ending/solution? well once again, the TV format rears its ugly head, how many episodes do you want Archer eating worm larvae? The only other alien it could have been would have been Phlox, and he was needed on the ship to effect the cure, so of course it was something about T'Pol which allowed her to resist the change.
Just a few thoughts I guess.
FYI,
'Extinction' Brings Ratings Back To Life
http://www.trektoday.com/news/250903_03.shtml
Summary & analysis of the latest Enterprise episode
http://www.treknation.com/reviews/en...tinction.shtml
IMO, I thought it was a good episode but not great. I liked the first episode (Xindi) of this season better. Generally, I like the stories on ENT but not all of the characters (esp. Archer). However, I do prefer TNG, DS9 and VOY to ENT.
Only so much you can do in a single 44 minute episode though. Unless they planned to stretch a scenario like this out into a story arc, there is only so much time to tell a story in stand alone episodic television.
There used to be a time when it was much easier for us to suspend disbelief. Some would say that it was because America wasn't as smart back then as it is today. Codswallop in my opinion. The best thing to do is avoid watching Trek or any science fiction for that matter if you have some kind of background in a scientific field. Science fiction breaks the rules all the time. Just sit back, unlearn what you have learned, and enjoy.:D
Respectfully,
General Chang
Not quite "Anomaly" but enjoyable nonetheless. And we got a cool new ship design, and not one, but two new EV suit designs. I liked the idea of Archer's 'original' self appearing in his dream, and would like to have seen more subconscious stuff, but most viewers would probably have been bored. I thought Bakula and Blalock both acquitted themselves well.
I went into this one a little skeptical, given some of the previous reviews on the episode. However, I found it quite easy to suspend disbelief on the virus thing, and enjoyed the quirky, almost monkey-like mannerisms of the infected crew.
And those new ship designs were pretty cool, too. ;)
I gave it an 8.
I found it an acceptable episode.
Weird Viruses have appeared before in Trek - what I liked was that this virus actually had a purpose and drove the story. It wasn't a generic "alien pathagen does wacky things to the crew for no apparent reason other than to fill an hour" - it was purposeful. So beyond the standard race against time to solve the plague, it also brought up a lot of peripheral issues that thought was rather refreshing.
The acting was good, the story held my interest, and for a filler episode (ie one not directly pushing forward Temporal Cold War or the great Xindi hunt) it was quite solid.
'Extinction' Exterminated By Reviewers
Reviews for Wednesday night's Enterprise episode "Extinction" have been posted online. Most reviewers were very critical of the derivative storyline, though many praised the show's acting, directing and music.
http://www.trektoday.com/news/290903_01.shtml
I gave it a six, the speed of the virus brought the score down, but if they proved that the laws of Biochemistry are all screwed up like those of physics, then I would have been more generous. Instead they just make mention of the idea and then it is forgotten.
Ok, Tripp is having trouble sleeping and T'Pol is helping with some kind of pressure therapy thing. We get it, and we don't need to have useless scenes showing it in every ep.
Having said that the show is finally going in the direction I had hoped it would from the start. The Expanse story arc gets them into new territory and gets rid of the reliance B&B had on Gene. This idea might be the first good one B&B have pulled out of their collective a$$es yet. Here's hoping they don't end it with one of their usual (and tradmarked) brain farts.:rolleyes:
Generally, I felt this was a good episode.
Yes, the viral transformation was rather quick -- however, we should keep in mind that this was an engineered virus. Doubtless it was designed to affect the victims quickly, overcoming any desire to transform themselves back (assuming they had the means to do so). Also, it wasn't *really* complete for several days -- Phlox said as much (advising them at what point there wouldn't be enough of the original genome left for the cure to work).
One thing I was glad of was that they didn't use the ol' "transporter cure".
A weak point was the fact that the other aliens had been trying to cure the disease for 60 years, and were unable to do so -- and Phlox did it in a few days. However, it's possible they don't know as much about viral medicine as Phlox does. Technology doesn't *have* to advance equally in all areas, and it's possible they're bad at medicine, relatively speaking.
A nice touch at the end -- saving the last sample of the virus. What Archer plans to do with it remains unclear, but his belief that destroying it was genocide was a novel touch.
The story loses some points for a lack of originality; fundamentally, it was still "crew gets sick, Doc does research, crew is cured", and we've seen that plot before. Additional interaction between transformed Archer and subconscious Archer might have mitigated this somewhat, if deftly written.
Overall, I'd give it a solid "7"
Well, that could be written down to the fact that none of the other races that tried to cure it didn't have someone who actually was able to fight it off to work from.