• Chosen Realm Part 2 October 15 - 9:13 pm

Incorrect use of the word decimated, which means 1 out of 10 dead. Correct word would be annihilated.

And lo, the Powers That Be did hoist upon their viewers a Parable intended to Echo the Current State of Affairs, that being Messed Up, due to the Influx of Religious Zealotry. And Sparrow47 looked, and saw that it was Mediocre.

Seriously, folks. It's like the writers got the "Religious Intolerance Paint-By-Numbers Kit" for this one. Really nothing that original or thought-provoking. Mainly, I'd say the reason for this would have to be the fact that the whole episode is set up as a square-off between two diametrically opposing and completely unyeilding figures- Archer and D'Jamat. So, they argue, and they argue, and they argue... and they get nowhere. And neither does the episode. Oh, and then they give us the "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" ending. What. Ever.

Three things I liked-
1) Enterprise has Instant Messenger! Cool! I wonder what Phlox's screenname is.
2) In one of the more interesting moments of the episode, D'Jamat threw Archer's torture of the prisoner in "Anomaly" back in his face, suggesting that they're not so different. Of course, they really didn't follow through on this so well... rats.
3) Reed had a nice little swagger to him after his team retook the bridge. Nice touch.

Three things I didn't like-

1) How in the world did Reed's weapon run out of juice so quickly? Wouldn't you want your weapons to last a tad bit longer?
2)After D'Jamat purges the ship's memory banks of their knowledge of the Expanse, we get a shot of the screen. My look wasn't perfect, but it looked like it said only 19.3 kb of memory had been deleted. 19.3 kilobytes? That seems awfully low. I acknowledge that it might not have said this, but until someone says different...
3)Annnnnnnd finally, we learn near the end of the episode that the whole "heretics" war has erupted over the fact that Group A believes the Expanse was created in 10 days, while Group B says 9 days. In effect, this trivializes the entire war in a sort of "What end of the egg do you break" fashion. D'Jamat and his followers look silly instead of believeable. Fie! Fie!

Other notes:

When Archer greets D'Jamat in sickbay, D'Jamat is first to offer a handshake. Good thing his culture sees handshakes as a method of greeting!

I wondered about D'Jamat's assertation that there are "thousands" of spheres in the Expanse. If that were true, wouldn't you hardly be able to navigate the place without tripping over one?

All in all, I can think of lots of ways this could have been made more interesting. Enterprise's writers couldn't? Oy. Final Grade: C-/D+ Next Week: Well, I don't know, because they didn't show any previews. So... I guess I'll just be surprised.

THE ENTERPRISE SYNDROME:
Once again, the Enterprise is taken over by hostile aliens. Sometimes formulas work, sometimes they're just lame plot devices. This was one of the latter.

IT COULD BE A BEAKER FULL OF DEATH:
What are the odds that Phlox just happens to have the materials necessary to create something to neutralize the biological explosives? And what are the odds that it could be distributed through the air?

RHAPSODY IN BLUE:
And if I'm not mistaken, the liquid was blue, shouldn't blue gas have blown through the ship? (Possible anti-nit: Perhaps the blue liquid changes to a colorless gas when exposed to oxygen?)

LET THAT BE YOUR LAST BATTLEFIELD. NO, WE REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME:
The ending was obviously very similar to the ending of TOS's "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." (Kudos where it's deserved though for the music when D'Jamat sees the city. Very haunting)

GENESIS WILL DO IT FOR THEM IN SIX MINUTES:
I liked the reason behind the two factions fighting. 9 days or 10 days. For this you must die. It's so true that the difference between some religions is REALLY minute.

RENAISSANCE VULCAN:
Why does T'Pol seem to control everything on the bridge. Scan this T'Pol. Fire the weapons T'Pol. Hail the other ships T'Pol. Jeez, give someone else something to do.

OVERALL OPINION:
I had very little feelings toward this episode. With the exception of the ending, it was fairly predictable. However, I liked the subject matter. If all of Enterprise's less than stellar episodes were like this I wouldn't mind too much. I liked what they tried to achieve. I really did. They just missed the mark in execution.

TUE

Was this Hoshi's week off?

What, no backups? The aliens deleted all the files, but did they get the backups? Has Archer been getting his crew to do backups?

Interesting how they had to rely on Merriweather and T'Pol to keep the bridge running, but D'Jamat was able to easily work the controls in the control centre.

Soooooooo, full security precautions is letting visitors walk all over the ship without escorts?

And here I thought Kirk & company were the first to do intership beaming. Apparently Archer did it first.

BTW is the NX-01 transporter faster than the 1701 transporter? Archer seemed to disappear faster than Kirk & company.

Sparrow I also groaned at the 9 days vs. 10 days comment.

Earlier D'jamat said that humans were obsessed with numbers then we find out that the whole cause of the religious war was... numbers.

All that weapons fire on the bridge and apparently no consoles were damaged. Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

D'Jamat didn't know about teleportation. But shouldn't he have read about it from the Captain's log?

K.A. Morgan: "I thought Kirk & company were the first to do intership beaming"

When did Kirk do intership beaming?
(By the way, I believe the first time a teleportation did not began or end on the pad was in Star Trek IV when they went from the hospital elevator to outship the ship (but that was using Klingon technology))

Note for future reference:
If you see a guy keeling as if to pray and his veins bulge out, then RUN!

K.A. Morgan: "I thought Kirk & company were the first to do intership beaming"

When did Kirk do intership beaming?


He did it in the original series episode "Day of the Dove," during which Spock commented that it had "rarely been done." Perhaps he was refering to this occasion.

Interesting that D'Jamat approved Archer's method of "execution."

Alien friendly operating systems aboard the Enterprise? Funny how these Triannons learned how to run the ship so quickly.

Where did T'Pol send Archer? Was this info definitely given? While the intership beaming of "Day of the Dove" has been mentioned, I could have sworn that Spock said that it had never been tried. Luigi, need your help. Again, another possible continuity problem.

Recycled plots from "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" and "The Apple" with respect to machine worship. I'm still waiting for the malfunctioning holodeck episode.

Incorrect use of the word decimated, which means 1 out of 10 dead. Correct word would be annihilated.Vicki Strzembosz

Well, that was the original meaning of the word, but its usage has expanded to include the definition they gave here.

And if I'm not mistaken, the liquid was blue, shouldn't blue gas have blown through the ship?TUE

My thought there was that Phlox only had one small container of the stuff to spread throughout the entire ship, so it would be distributed so finely you wouldn't be able to see it.

Only saw the first half of the epidsode, so keep that in mind, but...

First off, Star Trek continues it's glowing portrayl, er, potrail, um, portaryel (how the heck do you spell that word?) of anyone praticing a religion as an ignorant buffoon that can't accept scientific rationale for reality.
I believe the only Star Treks that haven't done this are TOS (which only did it sometimes) and DS9 (Where only half of the characters thought that religious types were ignorant fools.)

SIGH.

Interesting recipe for this relgion, though. As near as I can tell:

Take 1 cup Islam.
Stir in 2 tablespoons of environmentalism.
Add a pinch of Christianity.
Stirr untill off-beat.
Serves 5.

Interesting concept of sphere worshipers, though.


As for nits I noticed:

During dinner, D'jamat offers a toast to captain Archer. Isn't that a fairly Human gesture?

Also, for people who seem to have ships simply for getting to the spheres, and seem to have little interest in technology, they toss around terms like "cloaking field" and "organic explosives" pretty freely, don't they?

BTW, Sparrow: Loved your opening paragraph.


"I'm still waiting for the malfunctioning holodeck episode."-Harvey Kitzman

Wouldn't that be the one where Trip got pregnant? :-)

Good thing none of the fanatics in Engineering never thought to merely fire their weapons at the matter/antimatter reactor. They were ready to blow themselves up for their cause and the ship was about to be retaken . . .

Zarm,

I was referring to an episode like "The Big Goodbye" or "A Fistful of Datas". I have already voiced my concern about the third episode of the series having a holodeck.

Incorrect use of the word decimated, which means 1 out of 10 dead. Correct word would be annihilated. - Vicky Strzembosz

Didn't we have this debate before? Decimate has a number of definitions. While your definition may have been the word's origin, it is the least-used definition. They used it properly.


Annnnnnnd finally, we learn near the end of the episode that the whole "heretics" war has erupted over the fact that Group A believes the Expanse was created in 10 days, while Group B says 9 days. In effect, this trivializes the entire war in a sort of "What end of the egg do you break" fashion. - Sparrow47

That may have been the point... wars have broken out on Earth over religious difference outsiders might deem trivial.

When one of the fanatics was about to fire on the other ships, T'Pol attacked him. Why didn't she just use the neck pinch?

The nine days/ten days reminded me of "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield":
"I am black on the right side.
Lokai is white on the right side.
All of his people are white on the right side."

Re: "Day of the Dove": Spock said that intraship (correct term) beaming had rarely been done because of the pinpoint accuracy required to prevent the materialization from taking place inside a solid object.

Maybe you were thinking of the controlled implosion of the warp engines in "The Naked Time." Spock said that it had never been done. Just a thought...

Three things I liked-
1) Enterprise has Instant Messenger! Cool! I wonder what Phlox's screenname is. -Sparrow47


Optimism!!!!

Yes, Nove, I tend to get the terms inter & intra confused. Thought I had it right too.

Christopher Q I believe that a teleportation that does not begin or end on the pad is known as "site to site" teleportation.

Darth - That may have been the point... wars have broken out on Earth over religious difference outsiders might deem trivial.
That may have been the point, but it came off like the punchline to a joke.
A more interesting difference could have been Group A believes the sphere builders to be divine beings, while Group B believes the sphere builders to be mortal beings with a divine vision.

Sparrow47 - I wonder what Phlox's screenname is.
Phloxglove? ;-)
(Or just see the Dr. Phlox board for more Phlox puns)

Blah.

I don't know, but I felt that even "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was subtler in delivering message...
And I agree completely with Sparrow47, except...
How in the world did Reed's weapon run out of juice so quickly?
It didn't. It was simply hit with RZ (Religious Zealot) wapons beam.

Nits:
There! Are! Four! Ships!
So heretic fleet consist of four ships, as visible onscreen and stated by chief heretic.
So, let's see... one was destroyed, another one had engine pod blown of... That leaves us with how many undagamed ships?
As seen in later sequence, three.

The rest of the crew was ok, but Invisible Man suffered some serious injuries
OK, so I can understand that RZs left Phlox in sickbay to treat wounded... but I don't recall seeing occupied beds later when Phlox was AIMed by Archer. So why he was still in sickbay?

Also, was this MACO girl the same that kicked some serious butt in The Xindi? I guess she forgot her stick of smth

And for god's sake, forget Travis, in this episode Hoshi actions were limited to pushing one button and being escorted from the bridge. Poor Hoshi.

Maybe it is because you only want "white" humans to be the ones accused of bigotry, racism, religious intolerence and so on?

UPN probably wants to avoid any lawsuits under our politically correct culture that we live in.

(I know that this topic should go elsewhere, but it would be interesting if this is UPN's reasoning. Move it if it causes to much yelling and screaming.)

This of course might not be the case given UPN and T'pols outfits...

"BTW is the NX-01 transporter faster than the 1701 transporter? Archer seemed to disappear faster than Kirk & company." -Kieth Alan Morgan

Yep. The transporter on Enterprise seems to be (for no good reason) superior in almost every way.
(If the crew's gonna keep being so darn timid about using the thing, which seems to work perfect, at least kill someone in a transporter accident and give them a reason!)


"Zarm,

I was referring to an episode like "The Big Goodbye" or "A Fistful of Datas". I have already voiced my concern about the third episode of the series having a holodeck. "- Harvey Kitzman.

Yes, I know what you mean. I was making a joke. Hence the :-) sign.


Torque- LOL!


As for other nits-

Y'know, it seems kind of dumb for the female Maco to see an enemy pass right in front of her gun, wait a moment, and then go and hit him with it. Wouldn't shooting him have worked better?


So, whadda ya want to bet that this data erasure will affect Enterprise very little in the next few episodes?
(Along the same vein, shouldn't T'pol be able to re-create the Sphere data fairly well, since they should be able to re-trace their course to the last one?
Also, shouldn't they be able to re-download a lot of data from the Xindi database?)

Mediocre episode. 9 vs. 10. Yeah right.

What's the thinking on whether the Spheres/Who Built the Expanse story has anything to do with the Xindi/Gotta Find the Weapon story? Are these related or two separate story lines?

I gotta give this ep the highest compliment I can _give_ an episode of Enterprise: It didn't $u(k.

The Killer B's should leave the writing to the _experts_; the show's better that way.

And that's the bottom line...if you smell what I'm cooking.

Me - I tend to get the terms inter & intra confused.
I don't know why either since Intra means internal & Inter means external. [rolls eyes]

I grow increasingly tired of episodes that rely on the alien menace of the week taking control of the starship. It amazes me that, despite Archer's initial skepticism of the refugees, they are able to move themselves into strategic positions around the ship, take weapons from the armory in front of Reed, and work the control panels (English must be the easiest language in the galaxy to read) as if they were trained on these systems for years. Were I faced with transporting 23 unknow persons on my vessel, I would restrict their movement, most likely by setting up a dorm in a cargo bay and making sure that they were escorted in groups to the mess hall. At least this would give the MACOs something to do.

The unwavering fanaticism of D'Jamat is just a stale plot point. The only plus to this ep was the epilogue in which D'Jamat and his followers returned to their war-ravaged world. This ep is an example of a very tired and overused Trek formula.

1) How in the world did Reed's weapon run out of juice so quickly? Wouldn't you want your weapons to last a tad bit longer?
It was hard to see, but Reed was attacked by a refugee in an adjacent corridor from where he was looking (way to cover your flank, "chief" of security), and the shot struck Reed's rifle. There was a scorch mark on the stock of the weapon. Reed attempted to fire, then threw the weapon at the refugee. Oddly, the refugee's rifle seemed to malfunction at the same time.

Reed's Security teams must train at Los Alomos.


(a quick question, has there been a terrorist episode for enterprise yet? TNG had "The High Ground" and DS9 had "Let she who is without spots..." foreign and domestic terrorism respectively.)

I haven't seen the episode yet to jusdge if this one fits.

Terrorist episode? How about Desert Crossing from season one. This may qualify.

Well, it was ok. The second half was better than the first half. I saw that ending comming a mile away but to be fair there could only be one ending to this episode.

Ending #1: The Triannons see the devastation and are *happy* that the "true believers" died for their beliefs and that the "heretics" also died.

Ending #2: The heretics are all on those other ships and announce they're leaving the homeworld to live in space.

Ending #3: The heretics are all on those other ships and announce they're all leaving the homeworld to live on the spheres. By this time the Enterprise crew takes back control of the ship and the heretics go free, and the Triannons go back to live on the devastated homeworld.

Ending #4: Archer beams the Triannons over to the heretics' ships without any prior warning or announcement--one Triannon to each of the heretics' ships. Then he leaves.

The only way the Triannons know the data is being deleted is by the information on the screen. But the information on the screen could all be false, intended to mislead the hijackers. And the only way the Triannons know they're firing on the heretics' ships is by the information on the screens--and that too could be false. Maybe there never were any heretics' ships.

The Triannons don't know about the Xindi because they aren't interested in meeting aliens. So they shouldn't care whether humans agree with their beliefs. If they don't care whether humans agree, why should they care whether the heretics agree? Why should the makers of the spheres care what the Triannons or the heretics think?

Going into interstellar space at sublight speeds presupposes an abundance of alien starships in the vicinity. Why would they suppose that they'll meet any aliens any time soon?

Archer should have been asking a lot more questions like these.

What they could have done was have crewmembers asking the Triannons separately and then they compare the answers. That could have produced some awkwardness.

Y'know, it seems kind of dumb for the female Maco to see an enemy pass right in front of her gun, wait a moment, and then go and hit him with it. Wouldn't shooting him have worked better?

I wondered about that too, and realized it had to be an "It's In The Script" moment. In other words, the only reason for her not to fire immediately was eventually for the Triannon woman to show up and demonstrate her lack of allegiance by firing on another Triannon.

Is this the first time in TV history that throwing a gun at someone actually had the desired effect?

The Niners (I think, D'Jamat's side anyway) had tattoos on their right sides,while the Tenners had tattoos on their left sides.

So there really is a Big Reset Button? After so many episodes of collecting data about the Expanse, all it takes is one guy to come in and hit Erase. (Besides, he probably only deleted the File Allocation Table anyway. I.E., the files and data are still there, only the directory has been deleted. Should take T'Pol about two minutes to recover.)

When D'Jamat was telling the tale of the boy that discovered his encampment, the screen blacked out for a moment at a crucial part. Did he say that he had to kill the boy?

So the Triannon on the upper lever engineering deck drops his weapon as if to surrender. Yet he's walking down the steps towards Malcolm & Archer, clearly holding something in his other hand. He has time to raise it high in the air, then plunge it into his arm, where nothing happens, of course. Naturally, this is just so we can see that the explosive has been neutralized, but it ends up making Reed and Archer look like idiots.

I liked the rather skeptical view this episode took towards religious beliefs, but felt the message was too obvious and made the reasoning look too ridiculous. More subtlety would have been more effective.

Luigi, where's your post!!?!

I don't think we can definitivly say if an episode is bad or good until we have your commentary jokes on it.

and with a '9 ir 10 days' for plot line, there should be plenty to work with...

"The Niners (I think, D'Jamat's side anyway" -Influx

Either that, or Sisko's baseball team. :-)

I missed the teaser by the time I hit "record" when it aired Wednesday, so I had to wait for the Sunday repeat for the teaser, and I still haven't watched the episode. Sunday I slept, and today was my parents' 35th anniversary (and I just finished assembling the opened gift for them), so I might watch it right now or tomorrow.

Thanks for the compliment, Torque.

Or Tuesday.

I find it interesting that this episode, which features plot points centering on religion, is the 666th episode of Trek.

Vicki Strzembosz: . . . decimated, which means 1 out of 10 dead . . .
Sparrow47: . . . usage has expanded. . .
Darth: . . . the least-used definition. They used it properly.
:: Good nit, bad timing. Even I can accept the evolved definition, but only when applied to populations (or by extension, other countable things). Yet the writers continually refer to “decimating” single objects (a weapon, a ship, a planet). So it was just by pure chance that they got it right this time. But bring it up again and we’ll vote on it.

Archer: “. . . a species called the Xindi?”
:: So I guess he skipped H.S. biology. Looks to me like the Xindi differentiate at the class level.

Anon: If you see a guy keeling as if to pray and his veins bulge out, then RUN!
:: My veins bulge out whenever I capsize (“keel”). Little help please?

---Critique:
---Nothing very original here, but a fairly straightforward execution of the archetype nonetheless. I thought the Triannons’ true motives were telegraphed far too much with both the teaser and the Mess Hall scene in Act 1, but the ending was a nice echo (or rip-off) of the ending of Let That Be Your Last Battlefield(TOS).

---Notes:
I find it interesting that the Triannons’ one facial distinction, a ridge on the bridge of their nose and forehead, is extremely similar to the facial distinction of the Trek race for whom religion played a major role, the Bajorans.

Execute Tactical Maneuver Kirk-Epsilon-Bend-Over!
D’Jamat tells Archer in his ready room near the end of Act 1 that he has his men positioned all over the ship with powerful organic explosives. He then takes out a communicator and orders one of them to detonate them, blowing a huge hole in C Deck, killing a crewman. Archer goes to the bridge, with D’Jamat behind him. Archer begins giving orders to seal the hull breach and organize security teams, but D’Jamat silences him with a single word (“Stop!”), telling him to turn over the ship to him or he will have men near the warp reactor detonate their explosives. Do I even have to go further with this? Archer should’ve clocked D’Jamat and taken away his communicator the second he said the word “explosives” in his ready room. Instead, look what he allows him to do.
---And of course, this stupidity continues. When Archer frees Reed in Act 4, he keeps his back to the corridor, rather than flattening his back against the wall. T’Pol has plenty of opportunity to take out some of the Triannons with the Vulcan neck pinch, but when she finally does try to remove one of them from her station when D’Jamat orders him to destroy one of their enemies’ ships, she instead grabs him and tries to physically drag him from the station!
Instead, they kept Archer and beamed that premise off the ship
In Day of the Dove(TOS), intraship beaming was said to be extremely hazardous, but in this episode, a century prior, T’Pol beams Archer to another part of the ship without any discussion or mention on their part that there is any danger whatsoever. When the scene began to be played out, I thought T’Pol would surreptitiously keep him in the pattern buffer, and then program the transporter to beam him back after the Triannons left the transporter room, or maybe launch a shuttle and beam him there, or beam Archer off the ship to the Sphere.

A couple of more I forgot to jot down:

Geez, I’ve heard of sentimentality, but this is ridiculous.
Archer is crushed when D’Jamat deletes all the info on the Spheres in Act 2. What, there are no backups? Doesn’t Hoshi keep her own copy in her quarters? Why is Archer so upset over the loss of that one copy in the Command Center?
Great, Travis is finally given preferential treatment for a job, and it’s by a bunch of murdering zealots
Why does D’Jamat need Travis to fly the ship? After Archer is “executed” in Act 3, one of the Triannon guards in Engineering tells D’Jamat that there’s a malfunctioning EPS manifold on Deck D in section J-25. If these guys have mastered the English language so well that they can read it off the Enterprise computers, why can’t one of them fly the ship?

I find it interesting that this episode, which features plot points centering on religion, is the 666th episode of Trek. - Luigi

79 episodes of TOS
178 episodes of TNG
176 episodes of DS9
172 episodes of VOY

This adds up to 605 episodes, with Chosen Realm being episode 64 of ENT... making it the 669th episode of Trek.

Of course, my figures are based on production numbers, so they count two-hour shows as two separate episodes... if you're calling shows that originally aired as two-hours as one episode, then you drop 10 episodes from the count (Encounter at Farpoint, All Good Things..., Emissary, The Way of the Warrior, What You Leave Behind, Caretaker, Dark Frontier, The Killing Game, Endgame, and Broken Bow), making this the 559th (or 558th if you don't count The Cage) of Trek.

Unless I've done my math wrong...


In Day of the Dove(TOS), intraship beaming was said to be extremely hazardous, but in this episode, a century prior, T’Pol beams Archer to another part of the ship without any discussion or mention on their part that there is any danger whatsoever. - Luigi

I've seen this nit mentioned a lot... a possible answer is that in the Enterprise era, they don't know that intraship beaming is so dangerous... it could be something that is learned later (as it's used more often and accidents occur)... or perhaps its a limitation specific to the newer transporters of TOS era.


If these guys have mastered the English language so well that they can read it off the Enterprise computers, why can’t one of them fly the ship? - Luigi

I doubt being able to read is the only qualification for piloting a starship. I mean, I can read some of the indicator panels on an airplane, does that mean I'm ready to land it?

First, The Killing Game(VOY) was a two-parter, not a two-hour episode.

Second, thanks for pointing out my mistake. Searching through my Nitpick Document, I see that whereas Babel(DS9) is labeled episode 260, rather than listing the next episode, Captive Pursuit(DS9, as 261, I mistakenly labeled 270.

As for reading the language, yeah, you're right, but I just thought it odd that every alien race seems to be able to instantly read the others' language and operate their technology. I wondered why they gave the Triannons' the ability to read English, but not the ability to operate the technology.

Vicki Strzembosz: Incorrect use of the word decimated, which means 1 out of 10 dead. Correct word would be annihilated.
Luigi Novi: Nowhere in that scene was the death toll given, so aside from the “word usage expands” argument that’s been offered here, his use of the word is correct. Where was it established in the scene that the death toll wasn’t ten percent?

Sparrow47: I wonder what Phlox's screenname is.
Luigi Novi: FootLongTongue47.

Sparrow47: After D'Jamat purges the ship's memory banks of their knowledge of the Expanse, we get a shot of the screen. My look wasn't perfect, but it looked like it said only 19.3 kb of memory had been deleted. 19.3 kilobytes? That seems awfully low. I acknowledge that it might not have said this, but until someone says different...
Luigi Novi: It said, “19.3 XB.” I can see how the “x” looked like a “k,” but I reviewed the scene, and while the resolution wasn’t perfect, the letter looked to be bilaterally symmetrical. It looks like an “x.” This must be the creators’ way of theorizing a futuristic storage unit.

Sparrow47: I wondered about D'Jamat's assertation that there are "thousands" of spheres in the Expanse. If that were true, wouldn't you hardly be able to navigate the place without tripping over one?
Luigi Novi: Religious extremists tend to rationalize scientific phenomena that call their beliefs into question.

TUE: What are the odds that Phlox just happens to have the materials necessary to create something to neutralize the biological explosives? And what are the odds that it could be distributed through the air?
Luigi Novi: I would imagine that the crew has basic materials that can be combined to synthesize more complex ones.

Christopher Q: D'Jamat didn't know about teleportation. But shouldn't he have read about it from the Captain's log?
Luigi Novi: He couldn’t have read the whole thing, and it’s not like they’ve used it that often.

Harvey Kitzman: Where did T'Pol send Archer? Was this info definitely given? While the intership beaming of "Day of the Dove" has been mentioned, I could have sworn that Spock said that it had never been tried. Luigi, need your help. Again, another possible continuity problem.
Luigi Novi: I don’t believe Spock said it had never been done. The Encyclopedia only says it was hazardous, and the Encyclopedia tends to list all important details like that. As for where T’Pol sent Archer, if the malfunctioning area mentioned by the Triannon in Act 3 was where he was sent, then it was an EPS manifold on Deck D, section J-25.

Zarm Rkeeg: Interesting recipe for this relgion, though. As near as I can tell:

Take 1 cup Islam.
Stir in 2 tablespoons of environmentalism.
Add a pinch of Christianity.
Stirr untill off-beat.
Serves 5.
Luigi Novi: Make sure you don’t eat too much of it, because if you get indigestion or heartburn, it means you’re going to burn in hell for eternity.

Zarm Rkeeg: During dinner, D'jamat offers a toast to captain Archer. Isn't that a fairly Human gesture?
Luigi Novi: The Malcorians from First Contact(TNG) have something very similar to it too.

Zarm Rkeeg: Also, for people who seem to have ships simply for getting to the spheres, and seem to have little interest in technology, they toss around terms like "cloaking field" and "organic explosives" pretty freely, don't they?
Luigi Novi: They didn’t say they had no interest in technology, only that they do not use it to reveal their most important truths. You could say the same thing about creationists who do not doubt the truth about the science behind aspirin, satellite technology or televisions, but deny evolution because it contradicts their beliefs.

Kazeite: So heretic fleet consist of four ships, as visible onscreen and stated by chief heretic. So, let's see... one was destroyed, another one had engine pod blown of... That leaves us with how many undagamed ships? As seen in later sequence, three.
Luigi Novi: I reviewed the rest of the episode after that second ship gets that pod knocked off, Kazeite, and every main viewer shot and external shot showing the “heretic” ships shows two.

Zarm Rkeeg: Y'know, it seems kind of dumb for the female Maco to see an enemy pass right in front of her gun, wait a moment, and then go and hit him with it. Wouldn't shooting him have worked better?
Luigi Novi: I myself would also point out that the Triannon struggling with Reed presents his back to her at least a couple of times before that second guy shows up, yet she doesn’t fire at him either.

Zarm Rkeeg: Also, shouldn't they be able to re-download a lot of data from the Xindi database?)
Luigi Novi: My understanding is that the Xindi database is what was deleted.

Anonymous: has there been a terrorist episode for enterprise yet? TNG had "The High Ground" and DS9 had "Let she who is without spots..." foreign and domestic terrorism respectively.)
Luigi Novi: Detained.

roger: Ending #1: The Triannons see the devastation and are *happy* that the "true believers" died for their beliefs and that the "heretics" also died.
Luigi Novi: I like that one.

Influx: When D'Jamat was telling the tale of the boy that discovered his encampment, the screen blacked out for a moment at a crucial part. Did he say that he had to kill the boy?
Luigi Novi: Yes.

Influx: So the Triannon on the upper lever engineering deck drops his weapon as if to surrender. Yet he's walking down the steps towards Malcolm & Archer, clearly holding something in his other hand. He has time to raise it high in the air, then plunge it into his arm, where nothing happens, of course. Naturally, this is just so we can see that the explosive has been neutralized, but it ends up making Reed and Archer look like idiots.
Luigi Novi: Nature did that. The Triannon just held up a mirror.

I could swear both parts of The Killing Game aired the same night.

Luigi, did you type this somewhere else and then copy it over?
It looks like you repeat several of them?

Darth Sarcasm: I could swear both parts of The Killing Game aired the same night.
Luigi Novi: They did. As two separate parts. Not as a continuous two-hour episode.

Anonymous: Luigi, did you type this somewhere else and then copy it over? It looks like you repeat several of them?
Luigi Novi: Geez, I have no idea how that happened. Thanks for pointing it out, Anon.

Richie, to save space, could you delete the second half of my post above, past the first time where I say "The Triannon just held up a mirror"? Thanks.

Christopher Q: D'Jamat didn't know about teleportation. But shouldn't he have read about it from the Captain's log?

So, the next time the ship gets invaded (and it will be again!) and the invading leader reads the captain's log, will he see an entry about how Archer fooled one previous invading party by doing the teleport fake, thus rendering that tactic useless?

"You could say the same thing about creationists who do not doubt the truth about the science behind aspirin, satellite technology or televisions, but deny evolution because it contradicts their beliefs." -Luigi Novi

Actually, they tend to oppose Evolution because it's scientifically unfeasable and there is proof to the contrary. Evolutionists tend to be the ones denying evidence and clinging by faith alone to a ridiculous theory. But that's another board.


"Luigi Novi: My understanding is that the Xindi database is what was deleted."

Yeah... I thought they actually had a physicall mainframe that contained the database. missed the first few episodes of the season. Oops.

Thank you for proving my point, Zarm. Creationists oppose evolution on an a priori basis, and usually because they either do not understand the basis of it, or parrot badly argued anti-evolution propaganda against it. It is a perfectly feasible phenonmena that science has proved over and over again, and there is zero evidence against it. Every attempt to offer evidence against it has been debunked as scientifically fraudulent.

However, this is beside the point. The point I was making is that people with some prior bias toward an idea that upsets them will find ways to compartmentalize it. Instead of using evolution, you could the example of the Church refusing to believe in Galileo's heliocentric solar system model, or people who refuse to believe the truth about charlatans like Uri Gellar, John Edward, and other people who can "talk to the dead." So too, in the same manner, can the Triannons easily use starships and other aspects of sophisticated technology without having to admit to any proven aspect of the Spheres that does not conform with their religious views. And again, they didn't say that they no "interest" in technology, but that they defer to religion for their more important philosophical truths.

Luigi, I'm sorry, but I've heard and seen demonstrated more than just propoganda. In fact, I'm talking about cold hard (and scientifically supported) facts. I both understand the theory, and I understand why it doesn't work.
(BTW- I didn't have to time explore the site very much, but what makes it 'creationist propoganda?' It doesn't agree with evolution?)


Other than that, your point about the Triannons makes sense.

Zarm, I have continued this discussion here.

(putting this in proper thread)
Every time I see the word "Triannon" it kicks off that Fleetwood Mac song in my head, and it won't go away!!

The next time Archer needs to torture someone, you think he'll make a log of it?

NANJAO
Also, Archer did not deny the torture accusation. Is there some regulation that says this is wrong?


Its been brought that T'pol tries to wrestle for control and eventually backs off and to why she doesn't use the Vulcan Nerve Pinch. I think she was trying more a less to distract them. If she pinched him, they would have killed her. I think she was trying to slow them down reasoning that she might not die that way.

and a lot has been said about the 10 days 9 days...
The number of days could be important for more reason than is ever explained.
One Earth, what would the Jews think if the candles had only 5? (Sorry I don't mean to be offensive, I can't remember what it was called) or the Muslems(sp) fasting for 15 days during Ramadan(sp)?

Or even the earth being created in 6 days or 7 days or 8 days. Does it matter what day God Rested. Apparently not to TPTB.

I think Berman wants to only have a total of 4 viewers while Braga wants to have 7.

I believe that Voyager produced 176 episodes, not 172.

Counting two-hour episodes as single episodes, I count 166. Even if you count them as two separate ones, I count 170 (since there are four two-hour episodes).

I just double-checked, there are 172 hours of Voyager. And I thought there were only three two-hour episodes (since as you pointed out, The Killing Game aired as two separate episodes, not as a two-hour movie)... or is there another one I'm missing?

Caretaker, Dark Frontier, and Endgame.

I believe Future's End, Workforce, Year of Hell, and The Killing Game were all two-parters rather than two-hour episodes.

Correct, Scott. Darth, the four two-hour eps I count are Caretaker, Dark Frontier, Flesh and Blood and Endgame. (I'm guessing you missed one of the middle two?)

Didn't miss it so much as didn't recall it being a two-hour episode. In any case, I still count 172 hours (or 168 episodes, if you count two-hour "movies" as single episodes) of Voyager.

Influx: So the Triannon on the upper lever engineering deck drops his weapon as if to surrender. Yet he's walking down the steps towards Malcolm & Archer, clearly holding something in his other hand. He has time to raise it high in the air, then plunge it into his arm, where nothing happens, of course. Naturally, this is just so we can see that the explosive has been neutralized, but it ends up making Reed and Archer look like idiots.

Although Phlox figured out how to neutralize the organic explosives, was he able to determine specifically how they were detonated? The only Enterprise crewmember who saw that firsthand, went to kingdom come with the guy who blew the hole in C-Deck. So how do Archer and Reed necessarily know that the "surrendering" Triannon is trying to blow himself up, as opposed to ending only his own life to avoid being taken alive?

Still, even if they only logically guessed that the Triannon was trying to detonate his explosives, Reed should have shot him the moment the latter nearly made a move, just in case the explosives hadn't been neutralized for some reason. Or ordered, "Hands up!" when he came down the stairs holding the handrails on each side.

In any event, Archer shouldn't have lowered his weapon for a second while that guy was "surrendering".

When D'Jamat reveals his true agenda to Archer, he says that with a single command, he can order any of his explosives-equipped people to sacrifice his life for the cause. But during the battle with the heretic ships, D'Jamat never gives that command to any of his followers, and he has no reason to. Since Enterprise has far superior firepower, he has no reason to believe he'll lose the fight (until Archer takes the weapons offline). He would have destroyed himself, his followers and Enterprise only in the face of impending defeat.

So during the fight to retake Enterprise, why are these Triannons in Engineering deciding on their own to blow themselves up? These explosives can take out major parts of the ship, not just the wearer. Depending on what components got destroyed as well, D'Jamat could have found himself with a seriously damaged ship in the middle of a battle. Superior weaponry isn't much use if your engines go out and you can't move. Or your weapons go down and you can't shoot at all. Or your sensors go down and you can't see what's happening or target your weapons accurately.

Why didn't the heretic Triannons also come down to the planet surface? Do they know the homeworld's been leveled?

I viewed that whole Reed scene kind of perversely, like Reed was saying wordlessly "Heh heh, watch him try to blow himself up!" "Ha! Didn't work, loser!" Then they shot him. Hopefully, that's not what was going through his mind, but to me when I watched that scene it sure looked like it. :-P

LOL, Dan. I like that idea. It seems like something Reed would do.

Something which bothered me about this episode (okay, one of many somethings) was the scene when Archer finally decides to take a hand in things and fight back. He liberates a phase pistol and goes to free his chief of security to strike back against the invaders who have taken the Enterprise. He opens Malcolm's door and finds him...sitting on his bunk in the dark!! Looking all downcast and dejected! "Oh my, my ship has been taken over and nasty aliens have locked me in my quarters...without any tea!" Can you imagine any other Starfleet security character doing this? Sitting still in confinement while intruders roamed the ship? Yar? Worf? Odo? Tuvok? Heck, even Kirk, Picard or Riker would be tearing open the air vents, Jefferies tubes, crawling through the ducts, fooling with the door mechanisms, playing sick to ambush a guard...ANYTHING but sitting still in the dark. I'm afraid this made ship's security look pretty bad.

Captain, We don't know how long the Triannons had kept Reed and the others in there. If he was in there for hours, or most of a day, he'd have to eventually rest.

I can buy that, Luigi, but I think it would have been more befitting a Starfleet officer to have shown him attempting to escape. These are never-say-die larger than life heroic figures we are telling stories about, not "bloody Martin Smith from Croyden". If time or pacing of plot was a problem, all that had to be done was to show Reed inside the door attempting to jimmy the manual override or something like that. Then, when Archer opens the door Reed could smile with relief and say something like "Thought you'd never get here, sir." with a wink and a grin. Then it would be shown to the audience that our characters never lose hope in the face of adversity. That was a quality that Kirk, Sisko, and the other crews always had. The way the scene was filmed made Reed seem despondent.

Keith Alan Morgan: And here I thought Kirk & company were the first to do intership beaming. Apparently Archer did it first.
Luigi Novi: This is one of those really weird instances in which something I thought I saw turned out to be untrue, because we never saw Archer use intraship beaming. It's odd, because when I posted my own nits above, I mentioned how I thought they creators would have Archer simply held in the buffer, and later rematerialized on the pad, but that it turned that they used intraship beaming instead.

But after Thande pointed out to me on the Damage board, we never saw Archer rematerialize elsewhere on the ship, and T'Pol could've simply rematerialized him on the pad after D'Jamat left, and when I reviewed the sequence, I saw that she's was right! Perhaps the way the sequence was filmed made it seem to me as if T'Pol beamed him into the Command Center, and it is possible that she did, but given that D'Jamat left the transporter room, and that an exterior shot of the ship was shown between the transporter scene and the Command Center scene, it is also possibile that T'Pol brought him back on the pad.

Umm...I'm not sure who you were applying that pronoun to, Luigi...but I'm male.

Oops. Sorry, dude. My only familiarity with the name "Thande" is actress Thande Newton (whose name is short for "Thandewe", which means "beloved" in Zulu). Sorry about that.

I believe the name also appears in one of the Southeast Asian languages, but mine is Traeojan (Th+And-E for the etymologically minded).

Sorry, I know, off topic...

Thande: but mine is Traeojan
Luigi Novi: What geographic/ethnic area is that from?

That's Thandie Newton, Luigi.

And I *always* think "Thandie" when I see a Thande post on Last Day. Sorry, Thande. :-)

Luigi: Just don't ask, it would take far too long to explain.

Snick: I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.

Whoa, we see Travis within the first minute. What are they doing to this show?

Interesting episode. Not great, but a little entertaining. They used a creative way to take over the ship, that was kind of cool. The ending sure made it seem like a modern remake of Let That Be Your Last Battlefield though.

I was surprised that D'Jamat could delete the database just like that. He must've studied that computer for a while. And does the Enterprise computer have some kind of recycle bin feature?

Archer's lucky that the Triannons have never seen a transporter.

When retaking the ship, firefights occur in the Armory and Engineering. It's not like they have much choice in either situation, but I couldn't help but think about how they were firing at the torpedoes and then the main reactor.

TUE: I liked the reason behind the two factions fighting. 9 days or 10 days. For this you must die. It's so true that the difference between some religions is REALLY minute.
I forgot to mention this, but another reason it was so much like Battlefield

Zarm Rkeeg: Yep. The transporter on Enterprise seems to be (for no good reason) superior in almost every way.

Except for the whole beaming-up-with-a-bunch-of-sticks-and-getting-them-embedded-into-your-skin thing. Oh wait, you said almost. Frell.

roger: Ending #1: The Triannons see the devastation and are *happy* that the "true believers" died for their beliefs and that the "heretics" also died.
Luigi Novi: I like that one.
I think it would be consistent with what happened in the episode if D'Jamat was the only one overjoyed by the destruction of his planet and everyone else was horrified.

Dan Gunther: I viewed that whole Reed scene kind of perversely, like Reed was saying wordlessly "Heh heh, watch him try to blow himself up!" "Ha! Didn't work, loser!" Then they shot him. Hopefully, that's not what was going through his mind, but to me when I watched that scene it sure looked like it. :-P
Influx: LOL, Dan. I like that idea. It seems like something Reed would do.
Yeah, I agree.

Zarm,

why do you take a cup of Islam and only a pinch of Christianity in you recipe? To me, it would be the other way around, because fanatics and fundamentalism isn't inherent in any religion, its a twisted part of power play.

As for the 9/10 days distinction being unrealistic: one of the early schisms in christian church was the question of whether Jesus was wholy God (homioouses) or partly man. The difference in both definitions, reached at a council, was one iota, the smallest letter of greek alphabet, and after the council tried to settle the question, a war broke out afterwards despite, because one fraction said that the document said one thing, the other fraction read the second word. Isn't that a trivial reason for war?

The female soldier in the corridor: What I wondered about - besides her not helping Reed by shooting the guy in the back, and hitting the second guy with the rifle instead of shooting him - was why, when she was rolling around on the floor with the second guy, didn't she kick/knee him in the groin?

When Djamat asked Archer to nominate one crew member to die, I wondered whether he would consult with Phlox and choose a mortally wounded one which would die anyway.

Interesting that none of the triannons react surprised that archer is alive after his execution.

So Archer says to the other faction that he has control of his ship, and they fly off? They don't make any remark about the enterprise destroying two of their ships killing the people on it?

So at the end, Archer leaves Djamat and his fanatics on a destroyed world, so they can settle and rehabitate it, to breed another world of fanatics. In effect, Djamat got what he wanted, all heretics wiped out, and enough people left to procreate.

Unless sth. was cut in my version, I didn't see Archer rematerializing anywhere.

Nothing was cut, we never see Archer rematerialise. That's why I pointed out above that we don't know whether they did internal beaming or put him in transporter suspension; neither seems particularly plausible given the low level of transporter technology available.

Oh, and re the whole fanaticism thing: I think it's inherent in most religions, but probably most evident in the three Western monotheist religions. Christianity split first over the divine/human nature of Christ, then over the authority of Rome (twice), while Islam split over the familial/appointed succession of the Prophet, and Judaism's Samaritan heresy was founded on the idea that Temple Mount is somewhere other than the one in Jerusalem. Basically, if you have the belief that you need to have all the facts absolutely right in order to enter heaven, it's worth spending oceans of blood over seemingly trivial issues if it redeems the souls of even a few heretics. After all, what is all that beside the fate of a single human soul? At least, that is the rationality as far as I can see.

And I apologise if all that really belongs in RM.

Good points Thande. It just bugs me that current public/media opinion tends to think fanaticism & Fundamentalism = Islam, when there was (sadly) a long tradition of fanaticsm in christian history and of tolerance in islamic society.
And I always feel reminded of the christian fundies in the US first which so heavily try to influence a civilized, tehncological advanced society, which is a very different situation from poor countries with bad education, no continous history of democracy and states etc. That fundies take control in the latter is less surprising than the former.

And once you believe in an immortal soul, what happens to mortal body is of lesser consequence in order to save the soul.
I think the enourmous power that's really behind every fanaticsm (as well as the efficeint methods of sielncing people) is apparent when the young man starts questioning, and DJamat asks "Do not the founders talk through me? If you doubt me, you doubt the founders, and there's one word for that - heretic." He simply wants control over all of his followers.

Shouldn't this episode be called "Archer Vs. Al-Quida"?

It also reminded me of "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"