Yes, yes, yes, it reminds me of "The Naked Time" and "The Naked Now" but
that doesn't mean it isn't a good episode.

I liked the introduction - short, sweet, and to the point. The writers
of the show seem to be able to do this rather effectively. The use of
flashbacks provided short bursts of understanding and development of the
story. The radiation effects are brought on at a timely pace - not too
obvious yet there once you know what you are seeing. The degeneration of
humor to madness was smooth - we definitely know something is wrong when
Archer yells at Porthos. I was quite pleased to see that one of the
non-humans was greatly impaired by the radiation. I have no idea if
Porthos was or not but he didn't appear to be. I liked the nice touch of
Archer being barefoot in his quarters. And, at least according to my VCR
timer, when T'Pol said it would take five seconds to clear the field, it
really did take five seconds.

Ah - more development of the future we already know. I was quite pleased
that Malcolm did not jump from condition red immediately to red alert
once Trip jokingly called it a "Reed Alert." The alarm signal sounds
very familiar. Thank goodness that, in the future, someone got rid of
the tinny sound. And that's how each senior officer got his or her
security codes. And I loved the oblique reference to the Vulcan neck pinch.

A few problems - how can Travis be upgrading the navigation sensors?
Where did the new stuff come from? And a puzzler - why did T'Pol wait
for Archer to get into a dry uniform and comb his hair before saving the
ship? Unless that material is super fast drying, I don't think it would
have been completely dry and Archer's hair would have been still mussed
from the shower. And, although I know for the story's sake that someone
had to stay sane, isn't it amazing that Vulcans seem to be immune to a
lot of things. I was also quite surprised at how quickly Commander
Tucker recovered.

Great line: "A logical approach. Maybe you would like to write it for
me." "They both sound like a bag full of cats." "Lousy coffee." "I'm in
no condition to fly a starship." "Did we get some nice pictures of the
black hole?"

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

Timothy Lynch's Enterprise Episode Review

WARNING: If you're single-minded in your quest to avoid spoilers,
then skip this review of ENT's "Singularity."

In brief: Some nicely menacing moments, but could've used a
stronger story.

======
"Singularity"
Enterprise Season 2, Episode 9
Written by Chris Black
Directed by Patrick Norris
Brief summary: Radiation from a nearby black hole affects the crew's
behavior in some unexpected ways.
======

Very early in the original series' run, an episode called "The Naked
Time" was made. In it, while orbiting a planet showing extreme
gravitational shifts, the crew is infected by a water-borne contaminant
which releases most of their inhibitions. Some people got very silly,
some rather obsessively morose, and some inadvertently menacing.
In the end, we knew a great deal more about some of the lead
characters (particularly Kirk and Spock).

Sound familiar? It should, as "Singularity" follows much the same
arc. Granted, there were some "updates" to bring it more in line with
contemporary thinking: radiation becomes both the cause of the
behavior and the major threat, and the effects aren't quite as simple as
releasing inhibitions. The shows have such similar cores, however,
that it's folly not to at least look at the two side by side a bit.

Unfortunately, "Singularity" falls short in that comparison -- and the
fundamental reason why is that while it captures a lot of "The Naked
Time" superficially, it lacks much real depth. After "The Naked
Time," we found out a great deal about Kirk and Spock -- Spock's
constant state of war with his own impulses, for instance, and Kirk's
obsessive attachment to his ship. Both were fundamental parts of that
character's nature, both informed some of the character's actions later
in the series, and neither was something we could have found out
remotely as easily were the characters not laid so bare by outside
forces.

What did we find out about our heroes from "Singularity"? They can
get obsessive when an outside influence forces them to be single-
minded. With a few exceptions (Reed in particular), that's about it.
The obsessions were often used as comic relief (Trip's work with
Archer's chair, for instance, and Hoshi's obsession with her recipe)
and occasionally crossed over into more menacing venues (Phlox
most of the time, Archer occasionally), but there wasn't much there to
illuminate the characters. It's not as pointless as, say, DS9's
"Dramatis Personae," which saw everyone basically playing out roles
assigned to them and not much else, but it feels like a lot of missed
opportunities.

For instance, there didn't seem to be much logic about what characters
became single-minded about. From the look of it, most people began
to dwell on whatever was uppermost in their mind when they were
first affected -- but since different people were affected at different
times and there was no clear triggering moment, it's maddeningly
vague. (I'm all for ambiguity when it's intentional and thought-
provoking, but not when it's simply the result of sketchy motivation.)

That said, there were times when the episode was genuinely creepy, or
at least disquieting. The teaser, for instance, did a great job of
grabbing attention -- not only are we treated to the sight of everyone
but T'Pol unconscious and T'Pol's own warning that they're likely to
be dead soon, but it's also one of the shortest teasers on record. It
made its point, got us wondering "what the heck is going on?", then
got out of the way and let us stew. I appreciate that.

That impact, unfortunately, gets blunted by the necessity of going
back and setting up the premise. As a result, we see a lot of
seemingly trivial scenes -- yes, they're important in the context of
showing everyone examining his or her own trivial matter, but they're
still trivial scenes which aren't going to sustain that same level of
interest the teaser created. Archer wants Trip to look at his chair.
Chef is ill (and apparently has no backup), so Hoshi wants to fill in
for him. Archer's trying to write the preface to a biography of his
father. Reed's working on a security protocol (being the one person
who understands his job, it seems). Phlox worries that Travis's
headache might be more than it appears. To swipe shamelessly from
"The King and I": Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The most interesting object of obsession, I think, is Reed's idea of
creating some sort of "tactical alert" that will bring critical systems
such as weapons and shie...er...hull plating up to power when needed.
I'll admit that I think Reed's turning out to be a little too advanced,
given that he's installed the first Starfleet phase cannon (with Trip's
help), created Starfleet's first stable force field, and now effectively
brought about the first Starfleet red alert (or "Reed Alert," perhaps,
given the dialogue), but the idea behind this alert is a good one. (In
fact, it's a sufficiently good one that I really have to wonder why it
hasn't existed up to this point. Don't Navy ships, for example, have
something akin to Red Alert *now*? I know, I know, Starfleet's not
military. It's still a good idea.

As all the various obsessions begin to grow -- Trip tells T'Pol in no
uncertain terms that the captain's comfort is a life-and-death
component of the ship, Hoshi makes her old family recipe over and
over so that she can get it "just right," and so forth -- the mood of the
show really bounces back and forth. Given that we know where it's
going given T'Pol's log, the tone should be far more menacing than it
is -- even those obsessions that appear humorous, like Trip's or
Hoshi's, should be tinged with a sense of its later effects. Instead, it
felt as if I was being asked to alternatively listen up and lighten up in
rapid succession, and it was too jarring -- it's as if someone spliced
together your typical Adam Sandler film with "Das Boot." (Then
again, if it means drowning Sandler I suppose I could deal with that
temporarily...)

When the episode picks a paranoid atmosphere and hangs around
with it, it succeeds more often than not. Archer's reaction in his
quarters to T'Pol's suggestion that he leave is a good case: as before,
Bakula proves that he does quiet scenes much better than he does
histrionics. Archer simply stands, towers over T'Pol for a moment,
mutters, "I'm busy," and goes back to work.

Phlox's behavior in sickbay is another good case, if a bit more
obvious. The dark side of Phlox's interest in seeing what makes
humanity tick, it seems, is that he's more than willing to observe the
ticking process on a cellular level, chopping out what interests him as
need be. I imagine pretty much everyone saw the "at least let me give
you an analgesic!" feint for what it was well before Travis passed out,
but Phlox's reaction to T'Pol is another good one: "Please remove
your hand. I won't ask you again," he says while quietly bringing a
scalpel to bear. Brr.

The other success would be Reed, who's getting some of the more
consistent characterization of the season. Since "Minefield" made it
clear that Reed disagrees with many of Archer's security decisions
("Minefield," hell -- I think we saw it as early as "Terra Nova" or
"The Andorian Incident"), it's only fitting that one of Reed's interests
would be in beefing up security as much as possible within Archer's
guidelines. The success of Reed's story here is that he gets
something to do that's really relevant to his character: both his early
interest in the tactical alert and his sheer paranoia when left to his own
devices seemed entirely plausible and good fodder for future stories.
(He got so obsessive that he just teetered on the edge of turning into
"Red Dwarf"'s Rimmer, but fortunately hung back a bit.)

On the other hand, it seems that the powers that be have permanently
relegated Trip to the status of "goofy comic relief." If he's not
learning that being acting captain is uncomfortable or having an arm
turned invisible by a Suliban cloaking device, he's trying to create the
UberChair. Once is okay -- three episodes in a row is threatening to
disembowel the character, and certainly doing a disservice to Connor
Trinneer, who's capable of much more. The only time Trip got
interesting here was during his little face-off with Reed on the bridge,
but that was way too short-lived.

From a plot standpoint, T'Pol eventually figures out that the problem
is radiation from a black hole they're heading for (lovely things, those
radiation anomalies), and that the only route which is fast enough to
save the crew's life is extremely difficult to navigate. Thus, she
manages to revive Archer and have him pilot the ship -- and with a
little help from Reed's new alert system, they escape safely.

The last act was mostly okay so far as it went, but felt pretty ... well,
"standard" is the best word that comes to mind. All the usual
objections could be raised -- apparently there are no qualified pilots
on board other than Travis, for instance, despite the fact that Travis
can't be on the bridge 24 hours a day -- but this was one of those
situations where you almost have to say "okay, let's just run with it."
I'll admit that Archer's demeanor desperately asked for a quick cameo
from Leslie Nielsen telling Archer "I just wanted to say good luck,
we're all counting on you" a la "Airplane," and further that the "wait,
Reed's new alert just saved us!" surprise was anything but, but the
scene as a whole was certainly okay.

Two character notes come to mind in that last act, however. First, it
seemed entirely too easy to snap Archer out of his obsession. He's
easily distracted during the final act, but not once does he mention his
beloved preface. If it's that easy, why not wake a few others as well
so you don't have to work multiple stations? Second, and more
interestingly, I'm not sure I buy T'Pol's claims of immunity at all.
One could make a serious argument that T'Pol simply got obsessed
about the trinary system's radiation, and that her obsession simply
happened to be a fruitful one by blind luck. I don't know that leaving
this ambiguous is so bad, but I do wonder if the ambiguity's
intentional.

Some other musings:

-- When Travis first goes to Phlox, Phlox mentions that he's been
wanting to check on Travis anyway after his experiences from "Dead
Stop." Very nice.

-- T'Pol implies that black holes are very rare in trinary systems. I
doubt they're any rarer than trinary systems themselves: certainly
black holes are very commonly found in *binary* systems, and
there's not much reason for trinaries to act differently. This isn't even
on the level of a nitpick ... just a comment.

-- As usual, as soon as the ship clears the radiation field all the effects
disappear instantly and permanently. Sigh.

-- Most of T'Pol's narration works fine, but the line about "although I
appeared to be immune, I discovered the captain was not" is utterly
unnecessary. Let us see that for ourselves, guys.

-- Archer: "You're lucky you're a decent engineer, because you
obviously don't know anything about writing." Trip: "I'm not the
only one." Me: "You just handed me way too easy a shot. It's no
fun when it's *this* easy."

That should about do it. "Singularity" had a few individual scenes
which stand out as solid -- but fundamentally, it's one of those shows
that could've been far more compelling and interesting than it was. It
didn't have enough fun dialogue to succeed in most of its humor, and
had sufficient humor that it kept tripping up the tension. It got "The
Naked Time" right on a basic surface level, but there wasn't enough
spark to keep up a sustained flame.

Time to sum up, then:

Writing: A bit too split-personality: by trying to be funny and
menacing, it never wholly succeeded at either.
Direction: Some nice sickbay moments (and one or two with Reed or
Archer), but basically "okay."
Acting: Solid work from Keating and Billingsley, mostly okay from
everyone else. Pity Connor Trinneer.

OVERALL: 6.5. Not bad, but not stellar.

NEXT WEEK:

Where there's a spatial anomaly, there almost has to be a transporter
accident the next week...

Tim Lynch (Castilleja School, Science Department)
tlynch@alumni.caltech.edu <*>
"The headache's gone. What'd you do?"
"Very little. Fortunately."
-- Travis and Phlox
--
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.

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