My Review- 'Civilisation'

WARNING! READING OF THESE SPOILERS MAY RESULT IN YOU GOING TO ANOTHER 'CIVILISATION'

This was in a way a melding of two plots, the first, more obvious plot is the Data plot from TNG's 'Thine Own Self' where Data found he had inadvertently poisoned a medieval planet with radiation, the second plot is the TOS 'Kirk goes down to a primitive planet, saves it, and sleeps with one of the inhabitants, all before lunch' plot. I must say I did enjoy 'Thine Own Self', and I found this episode also encouraging.

STORYLINE  

Well the story starts of with Archer wanting to beam down to a pre-industrial civilisation. In TNG this would of been heresy! As T'Pol points out this is a very stupid thing to do and indeed there is a certain lack of subtlety to the way they go about their business on the planet, maybe the fact that this mission resulted in one of the inhabitants (Riann) finding out about them, this may result in Starfleet's later subtlety on missions, shown in 'ST: Insurrection' and 'Who watches the watchers?' (TNG) et al. The story moves at a good pace and the direction is excellent, as one would expect from Mike Vejar, who is indeed like the Steven Spielberg of the Star Trek franchise. The storyline is actually not too dissimilar from 'Terra Nova', with a similar issue over whether they should deal with the inhabitants, I expect to see a lot of episodes like this, especially considering the fact that the Prime Directive wont be invented until after 2168. That stated I did have a few problems with the episode including that if T'Pol objected so much to going down to the planet wouldnt she more likely remain on the vessel? Added to that this is another time when we get to see Archer make a potentially reckless decision with no consequences for it, I really want to see one of these decisions bite him in the ass, pardon my French. Also we yet again see the top three ranked crewmembers on an away mission together. So far Lieutenant Reed has had more time in 'the chair' than either T'Pol or Trip. Indeed bringing T'Pol AND Trip is hard to support, one of them maybe, to deal with any advanced technology, but not both, bring Reed instead to deal with any hostiles on the surface! However these are more general problems with ENT rather than the episode itself. Now onto the ship:

THE SHIP  

The battle with the enemy vessel was nicely done, as humans are the new guys on the block, as it were, it makes sense that most enemies would be able to kick them to kingdom come, however the way the ship was disabled was brilliant! No re-aligning of the deflector to some kind of techno-babble frequency, which I often found horrifically unbelievable (this thing was created to push space dust away from the ship, not perform any little scientific job you want!) Instead we got the old tactic of 'drop explosive in way, blow it up and watch as enemy gets really annoyed' and I must say I really enjoyed that, especially the fact that the transporter had to totally materialize the reactor before it could finish the job, no site-to-site transport here! Very pleased I am. :)

THE CHARACTERS  

The episode this week mainly featured on Archer, and Archer's reaction to everything was typical Archer. He has very pro-explorer, human-centric views, and he is steadfast in his beliefs to the point of stubbornness. Archer's romance with Riann felt very real, both actors had great chemistry, and the way Archer didn't talk down to Riann was great. Often Trek 'talks down' to species with lesser technologies, but here Archer treats Riann as an equal, excellent stuff.

The other character that deserves a mention is Garos, I liked Garos, I liked him a lot, he has that sort of slimy-yet-likeable appeal like Garak, Dukat and their fellow Cardassians often held during DS9s run. He's cool and calm and in control. However I would of liked it if it had turned out Riann was wrong and Garos was right all the time, we never get that sort of ep on Star Trek but I'd really like an episode where the 'Good Guys' aren't always right, and it turns out that they messed it all up by being there, the type of episode Stargate SG-1's 'Red Sky' did well for example.

STAR TREK NOTES.  

Funny how considering the ep is called 'Civilisation' we dont actually get to see much of a civilisation.

WHY DONT WE GET TO SEE THE LASERS, OR WHATEVER THOSE ARE, DURING THE BATTLE?! I like those. :(

Rating (out of 10): 7.5/10. Solid, but not A+ material.