Day 295: Enterprise, Shockwave (Part 2)

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S2EP1, “Shockwave, Part 2”

 Summary: Things don’t look good for our heroes, in any capacity. The Suliban that are involved in the Temporal Cold War have captured the Enterprise, and the only reason it hasn’t been destroyed is because Silik wants further instructions from his future benefactor. He’s going to be in for a long wait, because thanks to Daniels having pulled Archer into the future in a misguided attempt to fix the timeline, he’s just made it worse and wiped out the 31^st century. In order to fix this, Archer and Daniels scrounge up some materials in order to find a way to contact the Enterprise through time and space so the rest of the crew can help them out. No, this doesn’t always make any more sense in context.

Standalone Thoughts: There are basically two parts to this episode, a good part and an underdeveloped part. The underdeveloped part is everything that has to do with Archer and Daniels. Right from the start, the writers completely drop the ball on explaining why Daniels is there when the rest of his future was eliminated, or how the digital archives became books, or how he was able to rig up some tech to contact the past, and especially when it comes to explaining how Archer was able to do what he did at the climax. Tossing in a few references to the “Federation” isn’t going to distract us from these questions, writers. Even technobabble would be better than this, and that’s never a good thing. No wonder the episode keeps cutting away from it.

The much better part is the crew of the Enterprise working together to escape the Suliban and help set Archer’s poorly-explained plan in motion. Pretty much all the characters get something to do (admittedly Mayweather is left out of the bulk of it), and the whole thing is well-paced, creatively shot, and generally clever. I’d rather get a whole episode of this sort of thing than make it share space with something the writers apparently didn’t want to elaborate on.

Unlike what happened on Deep Space Nine, the second half of this two-parter is much weaker than the first, and doesn’t leave a good first impression for Season Two, although the “jailbreak” material props it up enough to keep it from feeling like a total letdown. Sadly, the next episode probably isn’t going to do much to wholly change my opinion. The episode after that, however…

How it Relates to the Whole: Although there will be more episodes that deal with the Suliban and the Temporal Cold War, I’ll admit that this episode doesn’t make it clear if the situation has been wholly resolved or not. It’s important viewing, but without the benefit of hindsight, it’s only important so you can find out what happened after the events of Part One. But at least it does have a connection to later events, however slight.

Other: *Nothing really jumped out today, so I guess we’ll just move on.

Badass Malcolm Moment: No contest this time; it’s the fact that he knowingly takes one for the team, despite all that that’s going to entail. I sincerely hope Tucker or T’Pol recommended a commendation for him after all that. Though if I’d had my way, he probably would have gotten a medal.