Star Trek has had its own boring moments in the past...but Im two episodes into the series and...Im already finding myself board to tears! You know what they say...the first couple of episodes, or sometimes seasons, the show is really working on finding itself and developing the characters and can be pretty slow...but they at least try to make things a little exciting. But so far not so much here.
The episode starts out with Seto Hoshi pining over a bug she picked up on a planet they explored a little of between episodes....for the entire opening...and then dramatic prelude to the opening theme. What the hell kind of opening is that? There's nothing interesting to really keep my attention. I dont care about this bug, its not a major plot point for the episode. Its just there...stop talking about it already and get to the meat of the episode.
But wait there's more. T'Pal and Cappy Archer, have this long conversation about exploration and how Vulcans don't share the same fascination with it as humans do. Really? Is that why its clearly established in Star Trek First Contact, which time frame is one hundred years in the past from the time Enterprise takes place, they the Vulcans are on a survey mission? Surveying is part of exploration...so according to cannon, yes the are interested in exploration.
And then Hoshi interrupts....with more exposition about the damn bug. wait a minute...I thought I said I didn't care about the damn bug. Its clearly not part of the plot and its certainly not an interesting enough subject to be a side plot...so drop it already. Also, a better subplot thats hinted at and becomes more important later is that Hoshi is feeling rather...useless and is regretting leaving earth, but its not said in so many words by her. Instead of letting the fact she feels this way to develop with the storyline, they decide to have Doctor Plox just blurt it out with annoyance. Thanks. that could have been an interesting thing to watch develop but lets not actually develop it thanks. I mean...why would you want to keep the viewers attention? That's just crazy talk!
By the way, we're now 5 minutes into whats supposed to be the meat of the plot.
Meanwhile, Reed and Mayweather are in the armory teasting out the torpedo weapon system, which is apparently out of alignment. Reed talks about how annoyed he is that they left earth without making damn sure the system worked, which I agree with. This causes contention later. THIS would have made a better plot point if it had been featured before the opening credits...instead we get a bug. Awesome choice.
So we cut to Trip and Plox in the mess hall...with a little more exposition about the damn bug...and then we get to the point with Trip being all antsy about not having anything to do other than his job in engineering. He's got a point. I'm getting antsy just waiting for something to actually happen. I feel your pain Trip! You must be board about all that lame medical exposition that the doctor is telling you about that has nothing to do with how you're feeling. Im glad the doctor has had an exciting week, but damn son you're rubbing it in. You're a bit of a douche. Just saying.
Ten minutes in by the way...still bored to tears.
Finally after about 15-20 minutes something happens! Finally they make a discovery! A ship adrift, no one answering the hails. After arguing with and then totally ignoring (thankfully) T'pals Debbie Downer attitude, Archer decides to board and investigate, bringing Reed and Hoshi with him (which took them over twenty minutes of the episode to get too). But even then they spend a few minutes on exposition as they're putting on the space suit gear. They find that the entire crew has been murdered. Returning to the ship after their basically unexciting trek over to the downed ship, he goes into downer mode like T'pal and leaves.
I have to ask this before continuing on...Why does Archer have to start his conversations shouting? We can hear you, calm down.
Archer later regains his balls from the over emotional downer Vulcan, and returns to find out what exactly was going on. Its determine that the aliens who attacked the ship was after something from their bodies, for whatever reason and said aliens were too return...and they do.
Here's where the weapon system subplot comes back and why I feel that would have been better to focus on at the beginning rather than the damn bug. they are attacked by the same race that attacked the downed ship and they cant defend themselves. It created conflict, a point of stress, tension. But instead it was a short lived conflict, they got help from another ship that was from the same race as the murdered crew.
Hoshi's emo subplot came into play finally as she tries to use the translation program to decipher the language that the crew of the race whose ship had been attacked initially. It doesn't work and we see just how much she doubts herself, throwing every excuse in the book as to why she can't do it. Archer forces her hand and she successfully translates, letting the alien know that, his belief that they were the attackers, was wrong and he helped them escape and then destroy the alien vessel that was actually responsible.
they make new friends and then...they end on Hoshi and Plox releasing the bug on a planet...the bug...the god damn bug...cause that was the thing they felt was the most important thing to return to, the thing that they felt was the thing that the audience would care about the most.
The kindest thing I can say about this episode is that it was lackluster at best. It was uninteresting, It barely held my attention, its plot was blah, they focused on the wrong things at the wrong times. It was just a mess.
and I have 95 more episodes of this. God help me if the writing and directing continues to be this bad...
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