My Review-‘Strange New World’
AFTER READING THE SPOILERS YOU MAY WAKE UP IN A 'STRANGE NEW WORLD.'
Well 'Strange New World'. I must say I didn't really know what to expect, Trek is full of planet paradises which turn out to be in some way dangerous. Some of these stories turned out good, some bad. As I move along let's look at the storyline.
STORYLINE
For the second week in a row we're getting a character building show. Lucky us. Seriously though, when originally watching 'Broken Bow' I was expecting a plethora of all out action. It's nice to see we're still getting some characterisation.
I had two problems with this episode on a storyline level. First of all there are too many senior officers on the planet, particularly when the first away team gets there. Let's see, we had Archer, T'Pol, Trip and Mayweather down there. Now I can understand T'Pol and maybe Archer. But why would you need the Chief Engineer and Helmsman on an uninhabited planet? Then there's the question of "Who the hell is commanding the Enterprise?" This is like a lot of the 'Defiant' centred episodes in DS9 where the station probably had to be commanded by Rom as the entire senior staff was away. And this time it's worse, at least there was a point to half the characters being on the planet in the first place! OK maybe I can accept Mayweather being down there, Wesley and Paris often went down to planets as an extra pair of hands, but I dont see any point in having the Chief Engineer down their. Other than maybe Trip was a little eager to get down.
My second problem was it suffers from the old '2 minute wrap-up syndrome' as some refer to it. This is where the writer is writing an episode and gets to about 2 minutes away from the end and realises it cant be much longer and so improvises a very quick ending. As a result we dont get to see if Archer and the gang have LEARNED anything. Technically T'Pol was right and a crewman almost died because of it. Are Archer and co going to be more careful in the future? Is T'Pol going to say "Remember that incident with the pollen?" every time nobody'll listen to her. Let's just say the strength of this episode was not it's ending.
THE SHIP
Not much to say here, except it's nice to see they're prepared to use the transporters still and they're not exactly perfectly working.
THE
CHARACTERS
One of the reasons I may dislike this is that my least favourite characters, Trip and T'Pol, are the ones we see the most. While we dont get to see Reed until about 1/4 way through the episode, and neither Phlox or Sato until about 1/2 way through the episode. :( However one of the places this episode really worked for me was the characterisation in the cave. First of all, I cant believe Im saying this but Jolene Blalock is actually improving, VERY slightly. There are parts where she is doing a good job and parts which are as cringe worthy as her 'Broken Bow' performance. Second of all we know the crew distrusts T'Pol, and their paranoia about her is extremely realistic.
Hats off to John Billingsley for the scene where Phlox gives Archer the bad news about the toxin. There is no sign or the normal, almost excruciatingly happy Phlox here, instead we get a more sombre worried Phlox, who is noticeably different to the Phlox we know and love. Very well done on that. That's probably my favourite scene of the episode (maybe the series) because of that amazing acting.
There are two red shirt types on the planet. Gee, yer think something's gonna happen to one of them? Although it was at least nice to see that he'll be fine, suggesting that maybe ENT is attempting to reverse the old red shirt phenomenon.
STAR
TREK NOTES.
Note T'Pol's hair. When she's in the storm it's all windswept. When we cut to the next scene and see her walking into the cave her hair is in normal Vulcan form. Apparently the Vulcans range of suppressed emotions do not include Vanity.
When we had the scene with the toxin in the blood I was half expecting decent medical terminology but instead we got 'the atom has one stray neutron' which to me suggests some kind of nuclear property and not, as it is apparently supposed to suggest, that it is releasing a toxin into the blood.
SUMMARY:
Rating (out of 10): 5.5 Objectively this should be a 5 but I love that scene with Phlox so much let's make it a 5.5. So far this the worst episode of ENT but it still isn't bad. Somehow I think it's crown will be taken by the approaching 'Unexpected'.
