I remember smiling - no, grinning from ear to ear after watching the very first episode of Enterprise. As I sat down to watch the tape of the opening episode of season two (my local cable TV no longer carries UPN, so I have to rely on a friend to tape it for me), I wondered if I would again be smiling. The answer is quite definitely yes - but not quite as broadly - almost, but not quite.

Let’s get rid of the beefs first. Did Hoshi really have to lose her shirt? Come on-the humor was so well done for most of the first season. I was very disappointed that the killer Bs found it necessary to revert to such juvenile humor. Maybe they thought it was only fair after the opening scene of Unexpected, but while the opening scene of "Unexpected" was just that ? an opening scene, Hoshi’s loss occurs in the middle of an otherwise tense situation, a total misuse of something that, in another episode, would have been funny. Here - it was totally out of place. Also, wouldn’t one of the Suliban notice her shirt hanging from the vent? And while I enjoyed the ending, I have major questions: Why was Silik let go? How was that wonderful machine of Daniels' able to find Archer in the future so easily? And, how is the Enterprise going to be repaired? It seems to me that some of that damage would need to be repaired on Earth. And we could have done without the swearing.

Now, the good parts - the story, except for Hoshi’s shirt, in my opinion, held together. I knew that something from Daniels’ room was going to help get Archer back - as the Vulcans would say, it was a logical conclusion. The idea of the Federation has been planted and the introduction of the Romulans was nicely done. For the record, I believe we have already met a Romulan - possibly a Romulan in league with the future police. The show was well-paced and the music was well done, especially the use of Archer's theme. The cast worked very well together - their unity as a crew was well in evidence. It's nice to know that Vulcan neck pinches work on Suliban as well as on humans. And Mr. Bakula does so well when he-s angry - plus this time he didn't have to restrain himself from knocking someone on their... well, you know.

The scene between Soval, Admiral Forrest, and Commander Williams showed nicely that Starfleet is starting to flex its wings more. Like the baby Archer refers to in his speech, Starfleet started to crawl last season. I think, this season, and I hope, they will start to walk. The scene between Archer and Daniels in the library, in a crazy sort of way, reminded me of the fishing scene in the pilot episode of "Quantum Leap." Bakula, as both Sam and as Archer, tries to pump the representative from the future - in this case, Daniels; in QL, Al - for information that the rep couldn't and wouldn't reveal. At least, this time, Bakula's character gets to retain his memories and get home. The cascade failure - reminiscent of "Cold Front" - tied into the last season admirably, as was Archer's re-entry to his own time reminiscent of his return to the Enterprise in "Broken Bow." T'Pol's speech, while somewhat expected, was written quite well, though she did seem a little emotional when she was delivering it. The ending scene in T'Pol's quarters was commendable. It was a unique and quirky way for Archer to say "Thank you" to his Vulcan first officer without actually saying it.

One of the more shocking items I noticed - NO ONE got to eat anything in this episode!! I think it may be the first episode where no one put any food in this or her mouth. Amazing.

Great lines. "So, I disappear one day and all history changes." "I made the biggest mistake in the history of time travel this morning. I don't intend to make it any worse." "You're on the ceiling. Why aren't you on a monitor?" "I still don't believe in time travel. - The hell you don't."

Land of Laurie
http://www.twogirlsandatv.com/lauriereviewscifi.htm#enterprise

Timothy Lynch's Enterprise Episode Review

WARNING:  This article contains time-shifted spoiler information
for the second-season premiere of Enterprise, "Shockwave, Part II."
Be warned.
 
In brief:  Not exactly flawless, but quite satisfying.
 
======
"Shockwave, Part II"
Enterprise Season 2, Episode 1
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Brief summary:  As Archer attempts to make his way back from the
31st century, the Enterprise crew is taken captive by the Suliban.
======

Cliffhanger resolutions usually disappoint me.  It's especially
problematic when the cliff in question towers over three months'
worth of hiatus, since by that time half of me is already in the mindset
of "this better be worth it," combined with "they've had three months
to plan this, so it better make sense."  Having a season-ending
cliffhanger is a tried and true ratings stunt, but in some ways I think
it's also taking a big risk that people won't stay beyond the actual
resolution.

Fortunately, "Shockwave, Part II" exceeded my expectations.  It had
some of the same problems I saw in Enterprise's first season,
certainly, but to a lesser degree -- and the story kept me a lot more
engaged than the first half did, which is quite the rarity for
cliffhangers.

One of the two crises we were left with over the summer involved the
Enterprise itself, facing imminent destruction by a horde of Suliban
cell ships.  The immediate threat is resolved pretty quickly:  T'Pol
continues to insist that Archer is no longer on board, and invites Silik
on board to check for himself.  Apart from having Trip momentarily
come down with a case of Idiot Allowing For Exposition Syndrome
by protesting the boarding party, this worked well enough, especially
since Silik quickly notes a "temporal signature" in the turbolift from
which Archer disappeared.

Over in the 31st century, meanwhile, the stakes are apparently higher
than Archer initially realized.  Daniels lets slip that a certain
monument has disappeared -- a monument to the Federation.
Archer's mission is, it seems, instrumental in leading to the Fed's
founding -- either directly, or through later missions it inspires.  Thus,
by removing Archer from the 22nd century, Daniels accomplished the
very disaster he was trying to avoid, and that the Suliban apparently
wanted.  The only way for him to rescue his own century is to return
Archer -- which'll be a neat trick, given that there appears to be no
technology left any more.

Back when the first part of "Shockwave" aired, I noted that Daniels'
statements were so cryptic that it sounded as if Berman and Braga
were just playing coy with us (especially the one about Silik killing
him "after a fashion").  I had a little bit of that feeling here as well, but
not nearly as much.  We have no idea how removing Archer
destroyed the timeline, or how his future actions will lead to the
Federation ... but there's every reason for Daniels not to let that
information go, even if he knows it himself.  That's more
foreshadowing than anything else, so I'm satisfied there.  (Daniels'
remark about Archer "treating time travel as if we were in an H.G.
Wells novel" was a little more annoying, but not much.)

In fact, the only real objection I've got to what we're given in the 31st
century is that it seems to remove some of the "who's on the right
side?" ambiguity that was so delicious in "Cold Front" last year.  I
realize that it'd be difficult to sustain that kind of ambiguity over a
really long term (though it's doable, and I'd point to much of the
Narn/Centauri conflict on B5 as an example), but at the moment we're
in a much more simplistic place than we were previously, and that's a
little disappointing.

In any case, I definitely DID appreciate the fact that Archer and
Daniels didn't have to actually assemble a full-fledged time machine
out of only two porcupines, an exercise wheel and six tons of Raisin
Bran, but instead just had to send a message back through time and
manipulate Silik into bringing Archer back instead.  There was still
some serious MacGyvering going on in the wreckage of the 31st
century, but it felt a lot more plausible than most of the alternatives,
particularly given Daniels' note that sending a message back into the
past is 300-year-old technology that he used to do regularly in high
school.

Archer tries to contact T'Pol using his new-fangled Wizard of Oz
gadgets, but it takes a while for her to really understand that she's
talking to him.  In the first place, she was always the one who was
openly skeptical about time travel anyway ... but more importantly,
she's also just returned to her quarters after being tortured by Silik.

All of this begs the question, by the way, of why Archer aimed for
T'Pol in the first place and not someone like Reed or Trip.  He
wouldn't have to do nearly as much convincing to get them to believe
it was him.  Granted, it's entirely possible that T'Pol was somehow the
easiest to contact (look for the only Vulcan, for instance), but a little
justification might have been nice.

Once T'Pol convinces herself that it's actually Archer, however, the
scheming begins.  With Trip having previously managed to open
communications without using the comm system, the senior officers
all confer from their respective quarters.  We don't know exactly what
they're up to, but we know that one of them has to pick up something
from Phlox and get it to Reed.  Unfortunately, the only way through
the ship is through conduits which can become a very tight squeeze,
and they're too small for anyone to do except, possibly, Hoshi.
Reluctantly, and somewhat claustrophobically, she agrees.

To note the obvious gripes here:  yes, the path doesn't look like all
that tight a squeeze, and yes, this seems to be a bit of a contrivance to
give Hoshi something to do in the episode.  I'll agree with the latter,
but where the former's concerned, I think it's plausible that it's only a
tight squeeze in a few places (such as getting into and out of the
conduits), and that we saw the moments that were easier to film.  :-)

And, of course, Hoshi's shirt gets snagged as she drops into the
hallway, so she arrives at Reed's quarters topless.  Was that
gratuitous?  A bit, certainly, but I think it worked a lot better than
some of its predecessors like the decon scene in "Broken Bow" or
Trip in his underwear for half of "Acquisition."  Mostly, it was
handled with a far lighter touch:  it wasn't lingered on, it wasn't
particularly leering, and Linda Park projected just the right mix of
embarrassment and acute annoyance.  Were I in a mood to object, I'd
object far more to the fact that when Silik tortures T'Pol he strips her
down to a tank top, whereas Reed's later torture just involves getting
smacked around a lot.  That's a significant double standard.

(Of course, that opinion is in no way shaded by the fact that I find
Hoshi orders of magnitude more appealing visually than T'Pol.  Not
in the slightest.  No, sirree.)

After that, things get moving.  Hoshi frees the others, and T'Pol lets
herself be attacked in order to draw two Suliban into an ambush (and
get their weapons, if memory serves).  The unconscious Suliban are
left in Hoshi's quarters under guard, Reed heads off on an
undisclosed mission, and Trip and T'Pol head for engineering.

The ambush was necessary, I'll grant, but I'm not quite sure about
T'Pol's tactics.  In particular, her semi-hysterical screams of "No!" at
the end sounded so exceptionally non-Vulcan that I think it should
have put the Suliban on their guard.  But perhaps that's just me.

Anyway, Reed's mission takes him to Daniels' quarters, where he
retrieves something.  Successful, he emerges ... only to find himself
surrounded.  Under torture, he "confesses" that just before Archer
left, he told Reed to get the device and destroy it so that Silik couldn't
use it "to contact someone -- I don't know who."  Silik, who's been
trying to contact his shadowy associate for two days to get new
instructions, is quite pleased, and takes the device away to make
contact as soon as he can.

T'Pol's feint didn't surprise anyone, I'm sure, but Reed's managed to
keep me off balance just for a few seconds.  Once he actually
"confessed" what the device was for, of course, it was obvious that he
was feeding Silik a line, but I initially wasn't sure at all whether Reed
being caught was part of the plan or a significant snag.  Nicely done.

While Silik preoccupies himself with his new toy, Trip and T'Pol fake
loss of antimatter containment and a possible core breach.  The
Suliban decide to leave and to tow the Enterprise away in order to
save the Helix, but as soon as they do, the Enterprise's fireworks
"mysteriously" solve themselves and it flees at high warp.

This sequence was fine, if not quite edge-of-my-seat material.  What I
find interesting, both here and in the way Silik's portrayed, is how
incredibly ineffectual the Suliban are when they're not getting their
advice from the future.  One part of that struck me as some writing
mistakes -- in particular, for the Suliban to just stand around like
idiots during the engineering takeover seemed entirely counter to
everything we've seen about their abilities -- but for the most part, it's
something that I could see as an interesting character flaw for this
race.  If the Suliban were getting so much help from the future, it's
entirely plausible to me that they'd start leaning on said support as a
crutch and not quite know what to do when it's removed.  If this is
something that's portrayed consistently, I'm all for it:  if it's just a one-
time thing here, then that's entirely too convenient.

Silik's plan, naturally, backfires just a bit.  The device he
"appropriated" from Reed calls up the image of a shadowy figure, all
right, but it turns out to be Archer.  There wasn't a lot of surprise in
this sequence, but I don't think there was meant to be -- and I'll admit
that having Archer materialize and kick Silik across the room was a
pretty good moment.

By taking Silik hostage, Archer manages to return to the Enterprise
and stop the Suliban attack on it, but the story's not over.  Even with
proof in hand that the Enterprise wasn't responsible for the
destruction of the Paragan colony, the Vulcans are convinced that
Archer's a menace to the quadrant, and want his mission cancelled.
Starfleet is prepared to consider the matter, even after an impassioned
speech from Archer ... until T'Pol adds her voice in support of
Archer's cause.  Archer talks of humans learning from their mistakes,
and T'Pol adds that Vulcans should know all about that, given their
past and especially the incident at P'Jem.  Specifically, she notes that
"I would hope that our people have learned from those events that
using a sacred sanctuary to spy on others was a dishonorable practice
to say the least."  It's unclear whether the Vulcans are convinced by
this argument, but Admiral Forrest and Starfleet's command council
certainly are -- and Enterprise is left free to continue on its way.

This had some of the best moments of the show, in my opinion, but
also a couple of serious frustrations.  Both Archer's and T'Pol's
speeches worked quite well for me -- T'Pol's because it played up the
level of how much she's come to trust Archer (*much* better than
V'Lar's simply coming out and telling us was at the end of "Fallen
Hero"), and Archer's because he essentially admitted that he made a
lot of mistakes during year one.  If the powers that be stick with that,
and we get to see him actively learning from past mistakes, that
resolves one of the more serious qualms I had about the show's first
season.  If this was just paying lip service, I'll be a lot less thrilled ...
but it had a ring of sincerity to it, so far as I could tell.

The frustration?  Why did we need to wrap up the "status of the
mission" in five minutes at the end of the show?  Given that next
week's episode appears to be mostly flashback, the frame story could
have easily involved waiting around Earth for Starfleet's decision, and
it would have felt a lot less impulsive on their parts and a lot less
forced on the part of Berman and Braga.  They've already established
that episodes don't have to have completely clean and pat endings
every time, and this would have been a great opportunity to make the
whole "gasp!  will the mission be cancelled?" seem like a bit more
than a tempest in a teapot.

Some shorter thoughts and observations:

-- When Archer contacts T'Pol, I found the shot of his reflection in
her eye at the end of the scene a really striking shot.  Well done.

-- Catty comment for the week:  doesn't T'Pol have *any* undershirts
that actually fit her?  Get that woman some clothes that actually look
comfortable!

-- When Archer visits T'Pol at the end of the episode, he gets
concerned about being seen by a crewman, even though T'Pol notes
that said crewman is generally known for discretion.  That felt
decidedly odd, as though Archer were worried about having his
intentions misread.  Does his crew really not know him in the
slightest?

-- With all of the Archer/Daniels scenes, I have to wonder if we'll be
seeing a Crewman Midland sometime soon.  Just in time for the US
elections in November, maybe?  (If you've no idea what the reference
is, don't ask -- it's not worth it.)

-- Daniels notes that Silik's backers come from somewhere about 300
years prior to his time, which would make it the 27th century.  That
would seem to rule out any connection to "modern" Trek eras
(meaning TNG/DS9/Voyager), but we'll see.  (Then again, given that
Archer's time-jump is mentioned in the same scene as 800 years and a
thousand years when it's actually somewhere closer to 900, I could be
reading a lot into that.)

-- It would have been nice to know how exactly Archer and Daniels
suspected Silik might be having trouble contacting his associate.
There's an obvious line of supposition (since the future's been altered,
the Suliban's contacts may not be the same people any more), but as it
is the whole thing feels a little bit like a *very* lucky shot in the dark.
(Another possibility, of course, is that Reed might have been able to
use the thing himself to get Archer, but this was a good backup plan
in case he was caught.)

-- Back in "Fallen Hero," we heard that the hastily-installed phase
cannons couldn't fire at warp.  Mr. Reed has apparently found time to
fix that problem, which is a good thing.

-- "The Romulan Star Empire?  What's that?"  "Maybe you shouldn't
be reading that."  Heh.  (And the use of the full name is interesting,
since it's not one that gets used that often.)

-- "I still don't believe in time travel."  "The hell you don't."  A great
closing exchange.

Overall, then, "Shockwave, Part II" did an awful lot of what it set out
to do.  The simultaneous plots fit together well, we got just enough
information from the future to get a sense of Archer's importance, and
we got to cheer the good guy and hiss the bad guy.  It's not the sort of
show I want to see every week, but as a cliffhanger resolution goes
I'm pretty satisfied.

So, wrapping up:

Writing:  A few fairly mild contrivances or breaches of character
intelligence, but really not very much -- and some decent
fake-outs as well.
Direction:  A couple of really nice shots (especially, as noted, the
reflection-in-the-eyeball shot of Archer), and generally well
paced throughout.
Acting:  Aside from relatively generic Suliban who weren't Silik, no
complaints.

OVERALL:  Call it an 8.5 for now; we'll see how it ages.  A good
start to season 2.

NEXT WEEK:
 
Vulcans in the 1950s?  Does Joe McCarthy know about this?

Tim Lynch (Castilleja School, Science Department)
tlynch@alumni.caltech.edu <*>
"Please repeat what you said." 
<THWACK>  "I said you're an ugly bastard."
-- Silik and Archer
--
Copyright 2002, Timothy W. Lynch.  All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
This article is explicitly prohibited from being used in any off-net
compilation without due attribution and *express written consent of the
author*.  Walnut Creek and other CD-ROM distributors, take note.

Related Links:

Where to Watch - Local channels and airtimes.
VHS, Laserdisc and DVD availability.

Cast:

Scott Bakula as Captain Jonathan Archer
Connor Trinneer as Chief Engineer Charles Tucker III
Jolene Blalock as Sub-commander T'Pol
Dominic Keating as Lt. Malcolm Reed
Anthony Montgomery as Ensign Travis Mayweather
Linda Park as Ensign Hoshi Sato
John Billingsley as Dr. Phlox

Guest Cast:

Matt Winston as Daniels
Vaughn Armstrong as Admiral Forrest
John Fleck as Silik
Gary Graham as Soval
Keith Allan as Raan
Jim Fitzpatrick as Commander Williams
Michael Kosik as Suliban Soldier
 

Creative staff: