The Prophetsteve Review: "Breaking the Ice" (Spoilers)

[prophetsteve]

Interesting episode - formulaic but not bad. I will give it a marginal thumbs up. They really need to think up some new ideas though...

Plot Points:

* Archer: Of all the captains of Trek, Archer is the most uncertain. Since the premiere, Archer has not run his way through adventures with the old Starfleet confidence we well know, but with an often self-doubting and nervous manner. He can be tough when he strongly believes something but I don't see him as a Kirk figure. If anything he has elements of Picards personality.

This is not a complaint. If anything its refreshing. It fits the concept of the series, where Starfleet and its crewmembers are branching out into unknown territories. Its just taking time to get used to.

* School-Children: This is where the episode shined. Just like in the american space program, the schools of Earth are taking a keen interest in Enterprise (or at least one anyway). I enjoyed this part since it clearly separated Enterprise from other Trek, where exploration and high-speed warp is commonplace.

* Building the Snowman: Starfleet at this stage is coming-off more as a future of NASA rather than a predecessor of UFP Starfleet. While the later Trek teams were all-business, its seems that the Enterprise crew likes to ham-it-up on the surface of worlds and comets. The snowman on the comet reminds me of how the Astronauts played golf on the moon.

* Vulcan Cultures: In TNG much was made that humanity, while once self-abosrbed, violent and oppressive had overcome their hostility. In Enterprise humans are just at the tail-end of their "enlightenment". Vulcans, while a much older and technologically advanced culture is still in their "pre-Trek" form - they are slaves to tradition, self-absorbed, mistrusting, and arrogant.

While there will still be arrogant Vulcans in Trek (DS9 comes to mind), the UFP seems to have mellowed out the Vulcans. Spock and Sarek were sometimes arrogant sounding but generally not the "dark Vulcans" we see in Enterprise. Same as Tuvok.

* Vulcan Technology: My dislike for "Unexpected" was reduced greatly with the idea that Vulcans have tractor beams.

Humanity seems a lot like the Humans and Babylon 5 - while most of the races had gravity technology, the humans in Bab5 had rotating sections. In Enterprise, humans are still lacking technology - while Earth has Warp 5 and grapples, Vulcans have Warp 6.5 and Tractor Beams (as I guess does Klingons).

While it seems to fly in the face what we know about Trek humans and their ingenuity, it really fits... Vulcan spacefaring culture is thousands of years old but only get to Warp 6.5, while human spacefaring culture is about a century old and has already gotten to Warp 5. They got to Warp 5 even though the Vulcans held back information... and they still got there in less than a century! I have no doubt that once the UFP is formed, human technology will blossom greatly.

* Vulcan Burnout: My above comments notwithstanding. At this stage I would like them to take the focus off the Vulcans and move it on something else. With a Vulcan crewmember on board we already have a Vulcan presence on every episode. My fear is that we may burnout and have what happened with the Borg on Voyager where their impact will be nill and the producers would to anything (even poorly thought out ideas) to keep them "fresh".

I think it will soon be time for another "Temporal Cold War" episode or an Andorian one. Something without Vulcans as a central facet of the episode.

* Hidden Messages: I find it strange that T'Pol would be upset at the intercepted message. After all what would you expect a quasi-military vessel to do when the find a clandstine encrypted message sent from a shadowing vessel. To think that Archer and company would leave it alone is just ludicrous. However Vulcans in this time frame are just a wee bit twitchy so I say that its pretty much in form for T'Pol to be well, Vulcan in this instance

* Soundtack: Somebody should wrest the license for the TV soundtracks from Crescendo. We really need someone to produce some more modern music from the francises. I mean DS9 had some really cool Dominion War songs, Voyager had that cool theme for Species 8472, and I wouldn't mind hearing some of the score from Enterprise.

I have decided to call my weekly look at Enterprise as "The Prophetsteve Review", just in case some posts a review before me. Yes, I will still be doing this every week and I invite everyone to post you views of the episode or to agree/disagree with what I have to say.

[Jalalabad]

I have to agree with most of what you said prophet. The characters are fitting the timeframe. Logically a green captain Archer would be timid when faced with tough decisions after all he can't think about what Kirk or Picard or any other SF captain would do because there aren't any.

Then the Vulcans, even though they are supposedly unemotional, would find humans to be offensive, emotional, illogical aliens and would probably try to avoid contact with humans. I do agree we are seeing too many Vulcans in these episodes... there needs to be something different that doesn't have some reference to Vulcan culture.

Enterprise is beginning to win me over and I was one of those people who was criticizing everything in the beginning. I just hope future episodes will have a bit more action. I don't mean ships blowing each other up and stuff, what I mean is so far the shows haven't had the confrontations seen in other treks, and there are no major philosophical or moral dillemas facing the crew.

Just some random thoughts...

[Admiral Wolf]

I agree with it Prophet,

I liked the episode, thought the Vulcan "ears" on the snowman was funny

The Vulcan ship was an interesting looking. I found the Vulcan captain to be a pretty rude sucker though.

[qerlin]

LIked it.

Only 1 beef: the gravity on a comet that size would be so light, the shuttle could have just popped off the surface on reaction jets.

[Sarge]

What qerlin said. If the writers wanted to injure a crewman, they should have found a more interesting way to do it than falling down a hole, especially on a body which shouldn't have had appreciable gravity. Where was the science advisor on this one?

Also, I've learned to accept the fact that there will never be seatbelts on the bridge, but there really ought to be seatbelts in the shuttlepod.

As for the school questions scene, it was kind of entertaining, but didn't really seem connected to the rest of the episode. It felt to me like something that was added when the story ran short.

I'm still not sure if it's the writing or Jolene Blalock's acting, but I wish she had more of her own personality and less of 7 of 9's.

On the plus side, I finally started to like the characters of Trip and Travis. This crew has the potential to become one that I care about. But Voyager's crew had the potential, too...

[Diamond]

I agree with the preceding posters. Querlin, I had some thoughts on the Comet/gravity conundrum.

Normal comets don't have enough gravity to make it hard to take off. However, they specified several times that this was a much larger than normal comet. But I'm betting the gravity is still less than Earth-normal, because otherwise falling 18 meters I imagine would have done more damage to the shuttlepod and characters. No problems so far.

The only problem is - if the comet is large enough to have enough gravity to walk around on normally, it would have formed a spherical shape. This is particularly true because - as was graphically and dramatically demonstrated on screen - constant melting and refreezing would occurr as the comet rotated relative to the sun.

So I have no problem with the gravity, and the dangers of takeoff. The shifting of the ice was particularly well done. I loved the fact that the wonders of exploration was back even with such a prosaic thing as a comet. We're not talking TNG-era superstrings and time vortexes. A comet was a source of wonder.

So the only tiny, insignificant nit I might pick is the shape of the comet. But hey- even from the Enterprise's point of view, the Comet was unusual. Clearly there was some process going on that us 21st century folks aren't awareof. Something which taking core samples might be the first step to discovering.

[Diamond]

Sorry Sarge, they did not get the gravity wrong. Normal comets don't have much gravity. This was a much bigger one. Their science advisior WAS on the job. The whole melting/refreezing danger situation was perfectly grounded in science.

[calguard66]

This was the first episode where I didn't have major problems with the plot or characters.

T'Pol's reaction to he letter being read was a bit unreasonable, but I'm willing to write it off to the signifigance of the content.

Overall a great episode, and the first one I'm really satisfied with.

GREAT looking Vulcan ship... anybody got a screencap?

[calguard66]

Originally posted by Diamond


Normal comets don't have enough gravity to make it hard to take off. However, they specified several times that this was a much larger than normal comet. But I'm betting the gravity is still less than Earth-normal, because otherwise falling 18 meters I imagine would have done more damage to the shuttlepod and characters. No problems so far.

Well, IIRC, it had a diameter of 82 miles... something that small shouldn't have had signifigant gravity, esp since it's density would be so low.

However, the low gravity could actually make it more likely to break legs... it would tend to cause "hyper-extension" type injuries, possibly the broken leg was actually a dislocated knee. That would also explain why it didn't appear deformed.

[Diamond]

I must have missed the "82 mile diameter" bit. I just remember the "bigger than ever discovered before" part, which can be enterpreted widely enough to account for the percieved gravity. Given 82 mile diameter, then I have to agree- there shouldn't be that much gravity unless there was an unreasonably dense materiel under the ice. Which is a good reason to take a core sample.

Excellent point about the hyperextension.

[Cochrane]

I would think humans would have walked on comets before.

Why didn't T'Pol tell the High Command she was soon to be married?

I don't think we've seen too much of the Vulcans. Its just the pilot and then later two episodes in a row.

I guess it's a fairly mediocre episode. I didn't like it exceedingly, but I didn't dislike it.

new ranking:
Andorian Incident
Broken Bow
Breaking the Ice
Fight or Flight
Unexpected
Strange New World
Terra Nova

[darkwing duck1]

Cochrane: T'pol didn't tell the VHC about her impeding marriage (or she may have, but it dosn't make any difference), because she was only assigned to Enterprise for that first mission "Broken Bow". She was supposed to help them return Klaang, and then she was supposed to be GONE...

[Phantom]

Pity the groom.

[odoital]

Oh I think there are a couple of perks to being the groom!

I thought it was an okay episode. Was interesting to see a Vulcan ship (other than the shuttle in TNG, the blur in unification and the landing ship in ST:FC). Wish we got a better look at it.

I thought the response to school kids was an interesting touch, but I thought it ran too long and was a little boring.

Similarly, although the action on the comet was dry. I didn't feel much tension in the scene and thought that the shuttlepod was a little... weak?

[calguard66]

Originally posted by odoital
Oh I think there are a couple of perks to being the groom!

I thought it was an okay episode. Was interesting to see a Vulcan ship (other than the shuttle in TNG, the blur in unification and the landing ship in ST:FC). Wish we got a better look at it.

I thought the response to school kids was an interesting touch, but I thought it ran too long and was a little boring.

"Marrying a woman with an abundance of boobage is highly logical"... yeah, right.

The schoolkids segment would have been better if they had given Trip his question, he got that look on his face, and then they cut to the next scene...