Enterprise: "Desert Crossing"

[erhershman]

This week, you get a double dose of Rate The Episode!

[qerlin]

Decent. Not great. Liked seeing Clancy Brown

[Keeper]

I agree with Qerlin, it was good to see Clancy Brown. I would have liked to have seen more social commentary in the show, though. There are obvious real world connections to be made; I think a deeper treatment of the topic could have been very interesting, although this may not be the climate to explore the "oppressed terrorist" side of stories. Of course, since it is not the climate, that may in fact be the BEST time to explore it.

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Weak on plot, but enjoyable character wise. Like others, I was glad to see Clancy Brown (hey, I still want them to bring back Earth 2 ) The best portions were the Archer-Trip stuff. Good interaction between the two again.

[Joe Dizzy]

Clancy Brown was great. His character was just plain fun to watch.
It was a shame that the interesting ethical conflict in this episode was merely hinted at and not explored.

If I had one criticism of the direction Enterprise is going, it would be that the writers seem to shy away from the interesting aspects of their stories. They always seem to inject fairly cheap humor or some silly action stuff to avoid adressing anything that might actually be interesting. Take Shuttlepod One for example where we are forced to endure Reed's fever dreams about T'Pol and his obsession with being called 'stinky'.
This time, we get to see 25 minutes of Trip and Archer tumbling through the desert, instead of somebody actually talking about the whole suppression/terrorist allegations/political angle of the episode.

I do hope that's not something the series will be known for- avoiding the 'real' story for some t&a, cheap jokes and fisticuffs. Because to me that's what keeps it from being really good and turns it into mere fluff.

And, am I the only one who's getting tired of Trip? I have yet to see a noteworthy difference between Archer and Trip character-wise. And always putting those two into a scene together seems redundant to me. I want to see more interaction with other characters. At least T'Pol gets to have a scene with most of the crew, but Archer and Trip seemed to be some sort of siamese twins.

[METH]

I enjoyed it. There was a lot left open for interpretation in the facts that were shown and what can be read between the lines. I feel this was a case of a message attempting to be shared by the director that was implied and not directly eloborated on. I felt its spirit was much closer to TOS than some of the other series. It makes you think!

[Balok]

Didn't like this episode much. Clancy "Your enemy cannot push a button if you immobilize his hand! MEDIC!!" Brown was a treat, and his character was well cast.

But some of the best Trek episodes have been those that commented upon the human condition. This one set itself up beautifully to make such a comment, and then failed to follow through. The action scenes were a poor substitute.