In the first episode of the second season of Enterprise, THIS IS PRETTY COOL. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.Â
I’ll admit that the second half of “Shockwave” doesn’t feel that character-heavy until the final few scenes. Oh, there are some cool moments here and there, like Hoshi deciding to face her claustrophobia in order to reach Reed and the Doctor. Instead, this is nearly all action, a tense follow-up to the double cliffhangers we got at the end of season one. I AM FINE WITH THIS. It’s just fun, and there’s nothing wrong with that! I have some logistical questions, sure, and I’ll get to that at the end, but in short: this was a blast to watch. Y’all know I’m a fan of well-executed tension, and this provided that.
How? Well, the Suliban are still a formidable antagonist, even though they’re not the antagonist of the show so far. They were just hired by someone else, and we still don’t know who that entity or person is. (That weird Future Person??? Maybe???) Regardless, that doesn’t distract from how creepy the Suliban are, despite that none of them do that awful limb stretching thing, and none of them camouflage themselves either. It’s the threat of the possibility that makes them so frightening. They could resort to that at any time, and we never know if they’re going to. So watching them invade Enterprise after T’Pol relents was unnerving. What if one of them went invisible and just stayed on the ship and never left? What if at any point, one of them was hiding in someone’s quarters and listening in on all their conversations? IT WAS POSSIBLE.
Look, I never assumed any of the threats leveled at these characters were empty threats, and that’s the best way to to build tension. Most of the audience is savvy enough to recognize what’s going on, but how can you get them to suspend their disbelief?
I mention that because, for the most part, I was able to do this. I couldn’t figure out how T’Pol would get the Suliban off the ship, and I was even less certain of how Archer was going to get back to the present time. And, for the most part, I think I know what happened, but I’ve got some questions:
What happened to Daniels? I think we can guess that there was only enough power to transport one person back or forward in time, and of the two, Archer was the more important one. His absence from history had unraveled everything and THE FEDERATION NO LONGER CAME TO BE. But does this mean that Daniels is forever trapped? Or did history snap back into existence, and Daniels is back in the correct timeline at home?
What exactly was Archer’s plan to get home? This seems so strange to me, but we never actually hear what it is that Daniels and Archer came up with. They needed someone – that ended up being Reed – to get that device from Daniels’s quarters. Does that also mean that Reed was supposed to get captured? Was the whole point to get it into Silik’s room so that he’d try to use it to contact the person whose instructions he was following? And if that’s the case – it already seems like a lot – then how could they have known he would have done something that would allow Archer to step through the stream?
Who is giving Silik his orders? Why is this still a mystery? Is it a single person or a conglomerate? DO WE KNOW WHO THEY ARE OR ARE THEY A NEW CHARACTER?
It’s entirely possible – hell, highly likely! – that these mysteries are intentional. I may find out exactly what’s going on in season two. I think that’s what the show is trying to do, but I’m not sure. It felt appropriate to put these questions in a review, though, so that you can all be entertained watching me struggle with this story. IT’S ALL FOR YOU.
The video for “Shockwave, Part II” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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