My Review- 'Silent Enemy'

WARNING! THERE'S SOMETHING CREEPING ABOUT! IS IT ALIENS? NO IT'S THESE SPOILERS FOR 'SILENT ENEMY'

This episode review is dedicated to the pulse cannons (which I think is the official name) seen in 'Broken Bow'. Now we've got Phase Cannons I seriously doubt if we'll ever see them again. :( I liked them, they may not of been the most powerful weapon but they looked cool :) . 

STORYLINE  

'Silent Enemy' has the usual A/B plot which regular readers of my reviews will come to know and love. Or loathe. The A plot is a story which oozes suspense, atmosphere, and a sense of self-doubt. The B plot is a light-hearted fluff piece about Hoshi trying to discover Lieutenant Reed's favourite food. Anyone spot the problem here? Well I'll tell you. These stories DO NOT go together. An episode has to pull you in and how it does that is to keep you in the same mood throughout it. As a result any A/B plot story has to have similar plots for both. As a result of these two stories being so different the episode is constantly changing mood, and that ain't a good thing. Constant changes in moods mean you get knocked back and forth so much the episode comes of as disjointed. These two stories separately probably would of gotten two of the highest scores of the series. Now they are probably going to have to settle for a slightly lower score. 

Now maybe Im being hard on 'Silent Enemy' it does provide an entertaining hours worth of entertainment, and even the most hardened characterisation lover would find it hard to say that the scenes with the phase cannons (both 'testing' and using them in the final attack) were anything but cool. The B plot too was generally excellent, Sato's asking people about Reed was entertaining enough although her scene with Phlox in the sickbay (well... John Billingsley :D ) and her seen asking Reed for dinner were both great. The story is light-hearted sitcom-style fluff, the type of thing you'd expect on Friends or Frasier or one of those other US sitcoms (which dont compare to Men Behaving Badly btw) and usually I like my Trek slightly more intellectual, but I was entertained well enough and as long as they dont do it regularly Im fine with it. (Although next time put it with another light-hearted sitcom fluff plot!) The only other real complaint I can come with about 'Silent Enemy' has to do with 'risk'. I felt that:

A: We've had enough episodes dealing with acceptable risk, we dont need another. Kirk dealed with this a long time ago and nothing new comes up here.

B: There is no need for every other line to have the word 'risk' tattooed in it, after the second half it started appearing constantly and to be frank it annoyed the hell out of me. Had someone jumped out at the end and screamed "Risk!" at the top of his voice I probably would of thrown my remote control through the TV screen and had to of paid for a severe repair bill!

However the aliens are a mixed bag. On one side of the matter they're quite fascinating, we never get an idea of what they WANT, but they do some funny things. Prime example is when they use Archer's message to them to send a message back. However I cant help feeling that 'mysterious aliens attack the ship' is just a cop out in character terms. They've done it before in 'Fight or Flight' (and in fact I cant help wondering if it's the same species) and I dont mind it. I hope this is the last time they do it this season (I dont like things left hanging!!!!) but otherwise I dont mind it.

So 'Silent Enemy' is mostly excellent plot wise but there are three major nitpicks which come dangerously close to ruining it.

THE SHIP  

So this week we find out the ship has 83 crew members (84 if you count Porthos :D ) based on Archer's line mentioning "81 humans, a Vulcan and a Denobulan." "Dont forget Porthos!" "Thanks" Sorry I just couldn't resist the other lines, it was the first time ENT has made physically laugh rather than smirk :)

As I've said the Phase Cannons are nice, I like the fact that they weren't even supposed to be ABLE to destroy a mountain, and that it was caused by 'Big bad power malfunction'.

Those who believe Phase weapons are early phasers take note: Reed refers to them as 'Phase-Modulated Energy Weapons', now Phaser actually stands for PHASed Energy Rectification. So they cant possibly be the same (although it would appear they're similar)

THE CHARACTERS  

Lots to learn about Reed this week, although I didn't like some of it. I did feel that the scene with the English parents in particular rebounded of me. It seemed to boil down to 'We're British thus we have no emotions and a proud lineage.' as a Brit myself I say 'BOLLOCKS' every last word of it. I seriously doubt the Americans would enjoy it if every American on UK TV was a fat, dumb, Homer Simpson-esque slob (which happens to be our stereotype for Americans btw). His list of allergies hardly helped the character either, in a similar fashion to Daniel Jackson's early allergies on Stargate. Thankfully this was quickly covered over, and I hope the same will happen here. In fact I hope this is the last we hear of it. Being allergic to pineapple doesnt automatically make it Reed's favourite either, although I could see him enjoying it as a sort of guilty pleasure. However it does suit his character that nobody knew his favourite food. He's not the type who lets people in easily.

Archer's battle about whether to turn the ship around felt real too, and very true to his character and his use of Hoshi to get the information he needed was true to him too. Shall we go onto notes?

STAR TREK NOTES.  

Science was generally excellent (not surprising considering the ep was written by the former science advisor!) but someone needs to check his energy measurements, the power they use should be in Gigawatts, not Gigajoules. A watt is a joule per second.

The aliens resistance to phase weapons was OK with me, we've seen species unaffected by phasers before after all (Changelings for example) although I do wonder if it was technological (the armour seemed to activate some sort of shield round their heads when they were hit) then why didn't they use it on their ship? After all phase cannons and pistols are practically the same aren't they?

Rating 7.5/10: An entertaining way to spend an hour but not beset by problems, role on next week's 'Dear Doctor' which looks like it could be the best ep yet :)