Xindi: You don't want to know my specialty! Archer: Let me guess... broccoli and cheddar soup! Xindi: No you fool, that's the soup of the day! Archer: Oh! Chicken cordon bleu! Xindi: Dammit!
It's somewhat amusing how much this episode really is the transition point between the first two and half seasons of Archer and what he'd become in the next one. A quiet self reflection of the real consequences of questionable actions paired with a self-destructive stubbornness in doing the most stupidly dangerous thing possible. The only way it could have been more on point is if he started doing another speech about gazelles before sheepishly admitting he doesn't know if the story's even relevant.
Part 1 of a three parter that's probably some of the best Enterprise had to offer. Archer has to deal with what happens when he actually fucks up. And it's one of those times where we're not told "ARCHERS doing the right thing!!" and rather we just see Archer fucking up and we have to see the ramifications. THIS is how you write a flawed character who is in way over his head and the only damned way he can get any leverage is through deceit and trickery and gives us an, admittedly lesser, version of Siskos own morality when faced with hellish circumstances. Sisko felt conflicted with the evil he had to do. Archer EVENTUALLY gets around to that in (one episode of) season 4. .... Still doesn't excuse Archer being a moron for at least 75% of the show.
I have to admit that this made me even more angry about seasons 1 and 2. Why didn't we get an Archer like this sooner? Like you said, one that's fucking up, but isn't framed as the hero? They could have done so much with this concept: Archer clearly isn't the right man for the job from the beginning, probably chosen for the job because of his father. And he screws up multiple times. T'Pol tries to help him, but his prejudice for Vulcans makes him ignore her advice. But over time we see him admitting his mistakes. And then he either decides to become a better Captain or leaves the ship, because this is too much for him.
This was the episode that ended with giant chunks of the Enterprise hull being blasted off and people flying out into space, which is still one of the most brutal things I've ever seen in any Star Trek, even more than that dude getting chunked by phasers in Conspiracy because Conspiracy was too goofy to be horrifying. This and Damage are what I would recommend to watch first if I was going to try to convince anyone to watch Enterprise. A weird place in the series to start (kinda near the end of the whole show) but I think it would work on almost anyone.
Fun fact: Here on German TV Conspiracy was censored when it was shown the first few times - we only saw Picard and Riker firing and then a cut to the next scene. It looked really bad and everyone knew that something was missing. But then we got Shades of Gray, the stupid clip show-finale of season 2. And they forgot to cut out the guy exploding, when Riker remembered that scene 🤣
I don’t like your idea of starting here but I have to understand that people who are watching this now are much different than us now old people who watched this when it first aired. Season 3 had its ups and downs and “Azati Prime” and “Damage” were definitely an up. When it first aired this was the last episode before X-Mas. There was a six week break between the two episodes! That was a hard thing let me tell you! I had a few problems with this episode that this guy didn’t mention. When NX01 spotted Degra’s ship he had others with him. Not one of them was scanning behind them? Archer could have killed them all if he had the mind to. (Of course he wouldn’t.) The planet had a constellation of satellites. I guess it was like our current GPS satellite system. None of those satellites were looking out? So ships could just come near your secret weapon building planet? Deeper still that satellite system just allowed an unscheduled shuttle to go near the weapon and leave? Where did it go? Why was it there? So of course the Xindi knew something was wrong and they found NX01 and they moved the weapon. What any sane captain try to enter the atmosphere twice? They have the Xindi shuttle and they blew up the Xindi moon base so they were on borrowed time. That was my issue, it was an exiting episode though.
Day 2 of leaving comments till you upload the Tuvix episode. I feel psycho Janeway would approve. A campaign of annoyance. I would carrier pidgin but resources are low. This will do
When it was revealed that J.J. Abrams would direct Star Trek, some nerd worried he might bring in torture scenes because of his work on Alias; and yet, we have scenes like this and Archer beating up some thug on Carpenter Street, or even the slug scene from Wrath of Khan.
Thats true, but i would argue that Discovery and Picard, shows that were made by Abrams' production studio, amped it up to 11 - Abrams either didn't want or wasn't allowed to do this in the movies because of the rating.
@@derekbates4316 I looked it up again and i'm wrong, Bad Robot wasn't related to Nu Trek, only the movies. I confused this because of Alex Kurtzman, who worked many times with Abrams and also on Star Trek 2009 and Into Darkness. Discovery and Picard are made by his company for CBS. So ok, Abrams is not to blame - even though he turned the movies into something more like Star Wars (a bit ironic considering he directed two of the sequels), he doesn't do stuff as mean spirited as STD and Picard. And fangasms? Lets just say most people didn't have high hopes for Picard after Discovery season 1. Kurtzman and the others of course promised it wouldn't be like that. And that's true: it was even worse 😈
@@lordmontymord8701 Really? I heard fans were fapping to Picard when it premiered. Its like they forgot what Star Trek was about, suddenly it was all about Picard! Personally, I was done with him after Nemesis: a dismal attempt to copy a more successful film (Wrath of Khan) but was the end to a dismal series trying to copy a more successful series.
@@derekbates4316 Nemesis was the last straw, but i stopped caring for any future TNG-movies after Insurrection. TV Picard would have given movie Picard a lecture about his decisions. Many people even point to First Contact with Picards behaviour making no sense compared to TNG, but this is one of these cases where i like the movie so much that i'm willig to accept certain not too convincing arguments like the Borg Queen being there was the reason Picard was driven mad (and she wasn't there the other times the Enterprise interacted with Borg after The Best of both Worlds). And then came the Picard show, giving us a Picard who is breaking down after beaming to a Cube - and greeting Hugh like they were best buddies who haven't seen them in years, despite Picard being very reserved the two times we saw them together on TNG ... It's really like the producers/writers only watched the TNG movies and then they decided to dial it up to 11.
On the one hand, I'm glad Enterprise at least tried something. On the other hand, the Xindi are just... it feels weird to have this big deal both on Earth (a major scar left on its surface that killed millions) and with the Federation - and yet have it never before addressed in all of the episodes of the show which take place in the future of this one. A future where the characters often bring up and reference events from Earth's past which would have been comparatively smaller and less impactful to human collective memory. I of course know why this is (because of how real life & production works), but I think it just goes to show why prequels can be a mistake for long-running franchises. Why this wasn't the Romulan War season (which I kept hoping for all through S1 and S2) I will never understand.
@@scockery Enterprise is clearly part of the Post First Contact timeline. It's mostly the same, but certain things end up changing as a result. That's at least how I can justify some parts. There might even have been a timeline where Archer was at least somewhat comp... okay, I can't finish that sentence seriously.
Enterprise is the reason Sam Beckett never made it home. Sam leaps into actor Scott Bakula and attempts to save Bakula's career by making this piss poor show better but it's impossible. He doesn't leap out until Scott's cast as the lead in NCIS New Orleans.
I agree that this might be one of ENTs best episodes, but i have to admit that this might also be the case because the ship gets beaten up really bad 😁 Its still a stupid choice by Archer to finish the job himself, but at least all the losses were an explanation why he couldn't send anyone else to die.
Azati Prime sucks. Brought shame to the Primes. Optimus Prime never would've sided with the Xindi. Unless he turned evil like in some Michael Bay crapfest.
I always took Archer's foibles as intentional by the writers. He's not Kirk or Picard. He's a beaurcrat in that seat via connections and was woefully unprepared for the kind of issues that come up such that yes, he pisses people off by accident and can be given the right sob speech to let a species die. Then the xindi hits and he's really out of his depth as now he has to be a real military guy, and as you say, he doesn't have the tactical mind to win the first level of command and conquer. His final line to T'Pol should have been something like "for all the good that came from it, you were right. We weren't ready. I wasn't ready."
If he was actually written like a glory-seeking bureaucrat who used his connections to get his position, then he'd have been a very interesting character. He wasn't written that way intentionally though, and interpreting him as such is little more than head-canon.
@@arcahmwinters70 Yeah, instead, what we end up with is the guy that seems like he'd author The Prime Directive not out of some grand wisdom, but as a cautionary work based on his own experience.
@@arcahmwinters70 Having Archer being an out-of-his-depth pencil pusher in charge of the ship could work, but the show would need to focus a heck of a lot more on other characters and Archer would need a story arc where he grows and changes as a character, or is ousted and replaced.
But putting a Trellium-addicted Vulcan in charge when you leave your ship wasn't necessarily a good idea either. I believe we know who could've tipped you over on her sneaking down to the launch bay to get some more trellium ore to get addicted: Lt. Reed, but Reed will later blackmail her on insisting that he go with her to look for Trip on Shuttlepod 2, the only one with a bathroom and a bedroom. Archer could've sent her to the brig for breaking his desk, but decides kp is better so he sends her down to the galley to help Chef-only to finds that she finds it "fun".
@@planescaped Yeah, he wasn't supposed to be the wrong guy in the chair, even though the writers didn't understand how they wrote him. I still love the fact that we were told in Broken Bow that Archer is an experienced diplomat ... We know why this little bit of information was never brought up again or expanded on.
To get the imposible done - kirk
To sway the closed mind - picard
To break the impervius - sisco
To Take a punch and demand another - archer
That face has had more punches then a Kool Aid factory.
To casually commit genocide - janeway
And whatever that captain from Discovery does.
@@johnoneil9188 cry like a baby?
@@InfernosReaperAnd eat Harry.
Xindi: You don't want to know my specialty!
Archer: Let me guess... broccoli and cheddar soup!
Xindi: No you fool, that's the soup of the day!
Archer: Oh! Chicken cordon bleu!
Xindi: Dammit!
To be real, that Temporal Coldwar nonsense combined with Sam Beckett over there was just *begging* for Quantum Leap references.
The snarf are a proud and noble race, snarf-snarf.
It's somewhat amusing how much this episode really is the transition point between the first two and half seasons of Archer and what he'd become in the next one. A quiet self reflection of the real consequences of questionable actions paired with a self-destructive stubbornness in doing the most stupidly dangerous thing possible. The only way it could have been more on point is if he started doing another speech about gazelles before sheepishly admitting he doesn't know if the story's even relevant.
Part 1 of a three parter that's probably some of the best Enterprise had to offer. Archer has to deal with what happens when he actually fucks up. And it's one of those times where we're not told "ARCHERS doing the right thing!!" and rather we just see Archer fucking up and we have to see the ramifications. THIS is how you write a flawed character who is in way over his head and the only damned way he can get any leverage is through deceit and trickery and gives us an, admittedly lesser, version of Siskos own morality when faced with hellish circumstances. Sisko felt conflicted with the evil he had to do. Archer EVENTUALLY gets around to that in (one episode of) season 4.
.... Still doesn't excuse Archer being a moron for at least 75% of the show.
I have to admit that this made me even more angry about seasons 1 and 2. Why didn't we get an Archer like this sooner? Like you said, one that's fucking up, but isn't framed as the hero?
They could have done so much with this concept: Archer clearly isn't the right man for the job from the beginning, probably chosen for the job because of his father.
And he screws up multiple times. T'Pol tries to help him, but his prejudice for Vulcans makes him ignore her advice.
But over time we see him admitting his mistakes. And then he either decides to become a better Captain or leaves the ship, because this is too much for him.
This was the episode that ended with giant chunks of the Enterprise hull being blasted off and people flying out into space, which is still one of the most brutal things I've ever seen in any Star Trek, even more than that dude getting chunked by phasers in Conspiracy because Conspiracy was too goofy to be horrifying. This and Damage are what I would recommend to watch first if I was going to try to convince anyone to watch Enterprise. A weird place in the series to start (kinda near the end of the whole show) but I think it would work on almost anyone.
Fun fact: Here on German TV Conspiracy was censored when it was shown the first few times - we only saw Picard and Riker firing and then a cut to the next scene. It looked really bad and everyone knew that something was missing.
But then we got Shades of Gray, the stupid clip show-finale of season 2. And they forgot to cut out the guy exploding, when Riker remembered that scene 🤣
I don’t like your idea of starting here but I have to understand that people who are watching this now are much different than us now old people who watched this when it first aired. Season 3 had its ups and downs and “Azati Prime” and “Damage” were definitely an up.
When it first aired this was the last episode before X-Mas. There was a six week break between the two episodes! That was a hard thing let me tell you!
I had a few problems with this episode that this guy didn’t mention.
When NX01 spotted Degra’s ship he had others with him. Not one of them was scanning behind them? Archer could have killed them all if he had the mind to. (Of course he wouldn’t.)
The planet had a constellation of satellites. I guess it was like our current GPS satellite system. None of those satellites were looking out? So ships could just come near your secret weapon building planet?
Deeper still that satellite system just allowed an unscheduled shuttle to go near the weapon and leave? Where did it go? Why was it there?
So of course the Xindi knew something was wrong and they found NX01 and they moved the weapon.
What any sane captain try to enter the atmosphere twice? They have the Xindi shuttle and they blew up the Xindi moon base so they were on borrowed time.
That was my issue, it was an exiting episode though.
🎼 It's been a long way,
geting from sphere to sphere 🎵
I wished he had gone with that! :D
@@ptonpc feel free to "steal" it.
🤣 I laughed _way_ too hard at that.
What about renaming "The Weapon" as "The Omega Mega World S*domiser"? I vote for that
Nope, Discount Death Star - nothing more needs to be added.
Day 2 of leaving comments till you upload the Tuvix episode. I feel psycho Janeway would approve. A campaign of annoyance. I would carrier pidgin but resources are low. This will do
When it was revealed that J.J. Abrams would direct Star Trek, some nerd worried he might bring in torture scenes because of his work on Alias; and yet, we have scenes like this and Archer beating up some thug on Carpenter Street, or even the slug scene from Wrath of Khan.
Thats true, but i would argue that Discovery and Picard, shows that were made by Abrams' production studio, amped it up to 11 - Abrams either didn't want or wasn't allowed to do this in the movies because of the rating.
@@lordmontymord8701
Picard was made by Abrams' studio? I thought Trekkers hated Abrams, and yet they fangasmed over Picard!
@@derekbates4316 I looked it up again and i'm wrong, Bad Robot wasn't related to Nu Trek, only the movies. I confused this because of Alex Kurtzman, who worked many times with Abrams and also on Star Trek 2009 and Into Darkness.
Discovery and Picard are made by his company for CBS. So ok, Abrams is not to blame - even though he turned the movies into something more like Star Wars (a bit ironic considering he directed two of the sequels), he doesn't do stuff as mean spirited as STD and Picard.
And fangasms? Lets just say most people didn't have high hopes for Picard after Discovery season 1.
Kurtzman and the others of course promised it wouldn't be like that. And that's true: it was even worse 😈
@@lordmontymord8701
Really? I heard fans were fapping to Picard when it premiered. Its like they forgot what Star Trek was about, suddenly it was all about Picard! Personally, I was done with him after Nemesis: a dismal attempt to copy a more successful film (Wrath of Khan) but was the end to a dismal series trying to copy a more successful series.
@@derekbates4316 Nemesis was the last straw, but i stopped caring for any future TNG-movies after Insurrection. TV Picard would have given movie Picard a lecture about his decisions.
Many people even point to First Contact with Picards behaviour making no sense compared to TNG, but this is one of these cases where i like the movie so much that i'm willig to accept certain not too convincing arguments like the Borg Queen being there was the reason Picard was driven mad (and she wasn't there the other times the Enterprise interacted with Borg after The Best of both Worlds).
And then came the Picard show, giving us a Picard who is breaking down after beaming to a Cube - and greeting Hugh like they were best buddies who haven't seen them in years, despite Picard being very reserved the two times we saw them together on TNG ...
It's really like the producers/writers only watched the TNG movies and then they decided to dial it up to 11.
On the one hand, I'm glad Enterprise at least tried something.
On the other hand, the Xindi are just... it feels weird to have this big deal both on Earth (a major scar left on its surface that killed millions) and with the Federation - and yet have it never before addressed in all of the episodes of the show which take place in the future of this one. A future where the characters often bring up and reference events from Earth's past which would have been comparatively smaller and less impactful to human collective memory.
I of course know why this is (because of how real life & production works), but I think it just goes to show why prequels can be a mistake for long-running franchises. Why this wasn't the Romulan War season (which I kept hoping for all through S1 and S2) I will never understand.
I hate time travel stories...
And seriously, the Romulan War mentioned in TOS was a perfect storyline for them to go with.
Daniels said, the Xindi attack wasn't part of the time before. ENTEPRISE alters the time line from what we saw in the previous series.
@@scockery Enterprise is clearly part of the Post First Contact timeline. It's mostly the same, but certain things end up changing as a result.
That's at least how I can justify some parts. There might even have been a timeline where Archer was at least somewhat comp... okay, I can't finish that sentence seriously.
I do agree that prequels tend to be a terrible idea just because of the continuity nightmares they bring.
@William George - The opium wars didn't scar Florida last I checked. This would be more comparable to WW2, which is brought up all the time.
Why the reupload? I could watch the original post just fine.
The Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator!
Enterprise is the reason Sam Beckett never made it home. Sam leaps into actor Scott Bakula and attempts to save Bakula's career by making this piss poor show better but it's impossible. He doesn't leap out until Scott's cast as the lead in NCIS New Orleans.
Turns out the sphere builders are just cheap clones of Alia and Zoey.
I agree that this might be one of ENTs best episodes, but i have to admit that this might also be the case because the ship gets beaten up really bad 😁
Its still a stupid choice by Archer to finish the job himself, but at least all the losses were an explanation why he couldn't send anyone else to die.
I know he hates archer but hes got to be one of my favorite captains just because how human he is.
Azati Prime sucks. Brought shame to the Primes. Optimus Prime never would've sided with the Xindi. Unless he turned evil like in some Michael Bay crapfest.
Maybe Azati Prime was a failed beta version of Nemesis Prime.
I always took Archer's foibles as intentional by the writers. He's not Kirk or Picard. He's a beaurcrat in that seat via connections and was woefully unprepared for the kind of issues that come up such that yes, he pisses people off by accident and can be given the right sob speech to let a species die. Then the xindi hits and he's really out of his depth as now he has to be a real military guy, and as you say, he doesn't have the tactical mind to win the first level of command and conquer.
His final line to T'Pol should have been something like "for all the good that came from it, you were right. We weren't ready. I wasn't ready."
If he was actually written like a glory-seeking bureaucrat who used his connections to get his position, then he'd have been a very interesting character.
He wasn't written that way intentionally though, and interpreting him as such is little more than head-canon.
@@arcahmwinters70 Yeah, instead, what we end up with is the guy that seems like he'd author The Prime Directive not out of some grand wisdom, but as a cautionary work based on his own experience.
@@arcahmwinters70 Having Archer being an out-of-his-depth pencil pusher in charge of the ship could work, but the show would need to focus a heck of a lot more on other characters and Archer would need a story arc where he grows and changes as a character, or is ousted and replaced.
But putting a Trellium-addicted Vulcan in charge when you leave your ship wasn't necessarily a good idea either. I believe we know who could've tipped you over on her sneaking down to the launch bay to get some more trellium ore to get addicted: Lt. Reed, but Reed will later blackmail her on insisting that he go with her to look for Trip on Shuttlepod 2, the only one with a bathroom and a bedroom. Archer could've sent her to the brig for breaking his desk, but decides kp is better so he sends her down to the galley to help Chef-only to finds that she finds it "fun".
@@planescaped Yeah, he wasn't supposed to be the wrong guy in the chair, even though the writers didn't understand how they wrote him. I still love the fact that we were told in Broken Bow that Archer is an experienced diplomat ...
We know why this little bit of information was never brought up again or expanded on.
I never did like it when writers had unlikable characters be the catalysts for things etc being created. 🙄🤦🏻♀️