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Posted By: Nomad Nov 19, 2001 - 12:23 pm

The Enterprise crew is dispatched by Starfleet Command to assist Fortunate, a human freight vessel that has been attacked by Nausicaan pirates. On arriving, they are surprised to find that Fortunate's crew is resistant to Archer's efforts to help them and determined to seek revenge against their attackers, no matter what the repercussions.

Remember the Nausicaans? They are the aliens that put a spear through Picards back in ST: TNG

Posted By: ZimNova Nov 19, 2001 - 01:53 pm

Yeah Nomad, that was in *Tapestry*.
They way ugly but have great hair for an 80's *big hair* rock band.

Posted By: Nomad Nov 21, 2001 - 05:17 pm

Well, I thought this episode was a little boring, but informational. It was basically telling the bad guys/pirates that they should expect Starfleet to be around and that the Starships are aremed well, I guess compared to a lot of cultures.
I am sure I will have a lot to say after I see it again when I am not being jabbered to by my 4 yr old.

Oh yeah, didnt those Nausicaans have a cool leather jacket look? Kinda like on Hutch from Starsky & Hutch (David Soul)...um..for those who were alive in the Seventies...LOL

Posted By: fanuilh Nov 21, 2001 - 06:06 pm

I guess their phaser pistols were all set on stun, eh, that nobody punched a hole in any of the barrels of whatever they were carrying in the cargo module.

I liked the first scene, tossing the football back and forth. That was kind of cool.

Where were the women? Did anybody else notice there were no women in evidence on the freighter? I assume they had some, unless the men were reproducing by cloning, which would be difficult without eggs, unless they had some in storage.... No, that's stupid. Anyway, how come the women weren't involved in what was being done on the freighter? Could it be that freighters in the Star Trek universe are the last bastion of male chauvinism? Hmmmm? Or maybe the women were too smart to get in the middle of all that testosterone-induced posturing. (No offense intended, guys)

I don't know about y'all, but I want to know who Chef is.

Posted By: Iznardi Nov 25, 2001 - 12:33 pm

Okay, we'll try for a hap-hap-happier review this time (since its the holidays)

Originality of topic: 8
Writing and pacing: 7
Character development: 7
Stupidity Factor: 2

See? Santa himself couldn't be more generous.

Mind you, originality of topic doesn't mean its a GOOD topic. Just original. But, seriously, we haven't seen much of either the freighter captains or the Nausican raiders so far, so this was part of the story universe that needed to be featured. My first thought was that the Nausicans had taken over the freighter and brainwashed all the crew--so the writers didn't go for the obvious. This episode opens up lots of possibilities--future human-Nausican relations, tensions between the Star Fleet an the independent "boomers" and a possible future confrontation between Enterprise and a the freighter where their ensign grew up. Clearly his family will come into the act somewhere.

Writing and pacing, not bad. They kept things moving, and still tucked in some interesting dialog. We find out that Enterprise is set apart from other ships primarily by the advanced warp drive, but that three more starships are in the works, and that the difference between travelling at warp 1.8 and warp 3 is about 2 1/2 years transit time. We know that "first contact" is usually via the freighters, and that they've apparently gotten at least 12 light years from Earth.

Ending was okay, too. I wasn't sure what the freighter crew would do.

Character development. Well, we learned a lot about the local "boomer." Pretty soon I'll even start to remember his name. T'Pol "telling the truth" in the hide n seek game was also odd. We already know that Vulcans can and will lie. So maybe this shows the lengths she'll go to, to avoid stating direct falsehoods.

Stupidity. Well, there was some. Like going into a big storage bin AHEAD of the person you don't trust, and only figuring out there were no Nausican life signs in there when it was too late. Granted, Archer probably never expected the first officer of a freighter to take on Star Fleet officers, but T'Pol should have known. She doesn't trust anyone.

There were also a few glitches. No women was one. No consequences for trying to kill four fleet officers would have been another.

I too await the introduction of Chef. You know its coming.

Posted By: fanuilh Nov 26, 2001 - 06:53 am

I have another nit to pick. Sorry, but this is bugging me. And I may have missed something, so somebody please tell me, was it a math problem, or did some of the crew die during the fight with the Nausicaans when the Fortunate crew took one of them hostage?

T'Pol says, IIRC (and I may not) that the crew complement of the freighter (can't remember the type... Y-class?) is 23. Later she says that she is reading 24 bio-signs on the freighter as they approach. Presumably this is the 23 crew members and the Nausicaan prisoner. So... there were at least three children; we saw them playing hide-and-seek. Was that all there were, and three crew members died during the attack, or was that an oops? I didn't think bio-signs would be restricted to crew members. Children would show up, yes?

And am I being too picky? Well, yes....

I did want to slap the acting freighter captain right upside his head, though. Self-sufficiency is one thing, bull-headed obstinacy another.

Oh, I just remembered something else. It's a good thing those cargo modules have artificial gravity. Once it was released from the ship they'd have all been bouncing around, along with any containers that were unsecured (and surely there weren't any, they weren't that dumb, were they?). Would have been expensive as all get out to film that, eh? Although it would have had some comic value....

Oh, dear. I just thought of something else. (Help! I'm typing and I can't stop!) T'Pol apologizes to the child. In TOS, Spock said Vulcans found Human habits such as saying "Please" and apologizing when one had not done anything wrong unfathomable. Maybe his family was more conservative than T'Pol's. Or maybe T'Pol is making more of an effort to get along (even though she doesn't like Humans and doesn't trust them). Hmmmm....

Posted By: ZimNova Nov 26, 2001 - 10:14 am

Picking nit's is the game with this one.
Fan, now that you mention it, No Woman yet childern??? I don't think anyone was KIA during the battle only that their captain was wounded. He was funny too. Wakes up after 3 days in a coma and the first thing he wants is a drink of whiskey. To bad they couldn't get Robert Mitchum for that part. Right about the AG in the seperated module, that was a mistake by the production staff either for budgetary reasons or because they think nobody is paying attention.

About those Phase weapons. One aspect of current firearms as well as the PPG's (pulsed plasma gun) used during Babylon-5, on Andromeda and Farscape is once you fire them the bullet or blast go's where the gun is pointed, where as with the phasers the beam go's where the weapon is pointed but they should be able to *rake* the beam across the target to obtain a *hit* every time! They also do no damage to the cargo yet in the next scene they can cut through the steel bulkhead door with ease?
Way too many close misses which adds drama to the fight but lacks scientific authenticity and makes me laugh every time for the last 30 years of Trek.

Now to *Warp Drive & Math*.
I'll admit I'm no expert on quantum mechanics. It was stated that the freighter was able to make Warp 1.8, Enterprise can make Warp 5.0 and Trip says an engine upgrade to Warp 3 would cut a "5 year run down to 6 months". One of the better lines was the first officers reply, "that would leave no time to enjoy the trip".......LOL
So it seems to my simple mind if you increase the speed by roughly 2X's (rounding off here) you decrease the travel time in half to 2 1/2 years not 6 months? Maybe the *curve of space effect* has something to do with it or each 1 point increase in Warp speed is [X] amount times an increase in Warp speed incrementaly?
Yeah I know it's just a TV show but that problem was bugging me.

Mayweather's character got fleshed out better in this episode but Hoshi was furniture, although she did speak a line or two thus maintaining her position in the opening credits.
As to *chef*...remember during V'ger Neelix said he was vary old and had served on a long line of Star Fleet ships over the years and...................

Posted By: Bmat Nov 26, 2001 - 11:26 am

fan- concerning T'Pol's apology- she was asked if she'd seen the other child- to avoid giving a direct answer she used the evasion that she didn't know anyone by that name. I thought it was not an actual apology.

-------
I wouldn't mind slapping the captain around a bit myself- it was disturbing seeing a human being so cruel to the alien.

Posted By: The Master Nov 26, 2001 - 09:02 pm

In case you're wondering why I'm not sharing any of my never ending opinions, I was doing the travel thing for Thanksgiving (going and coming...I've got quite the timing) and had to miss this ep.

The discussion's still interesting though

Posted By: fanuilh Nov 27, 2001 - 05:49 am

Zim, I seem to remember there being a math formula to calculate warp drive and how it cuts down on travel time. It's not a one-for-one thing. That is, if you double your warp speed it doesn't cut the trip time in half, it cuts it a lot further. I can't remember the formula, but I recall reading about it. One of those Paramount explanations, I expect.... There's probably one to account for the phasers not burning holes in things when the shooters seem to have such trouble actually hitting their targets.

There's a possibility that Neelix is Chef? Oh, dear. Oh, dear, dear, dear. On the other hand, maybe it's Paul Prudhomme, having gone through longevity treatments... Or Graham Kerr, now there's a scary thought.

Or Martha Stewart! Aaaaauuuggghhh!!!!! No, wait, couldn't be. I haven't seen any charming curtains or artful bowls of potpourri anywhere....

Posted By: Iznardi Nov 27, 2001 - 05:56 am

Well, Julia Child seems to be immortal. I bet she could make it to the next century. Or maybe Wolfgang Puck.

The best, though, would be Emeril. "Are you ready, T'Pol, cause we're gonna kick it up another knotch. Bam! And stay tuned, folks, cause the away team's comin' back, and that means--another knotch!'

Posted By: Iznardi Nov 27, 2001 - 05:58 am

Fan--actually, could be Stewart. Ever notice the artistic floral displays and expensive silverware at the captain's table.

It's a scary thing.

Posted By: Nomad Nov 27, 2001 - 02:54 pm

Has anyone given thought that it could very well be Guinan? Hmmmmm...She has been around since atleast the 1800's on earth...why not?
As for thew Warp drive formula...has anyone else read "Federation"? I really liked that book. I thought it was supposed to be very Canon, but I could be wrong. Anyway...I remember they describe how the warp drive waorks. Did you all know that the shape of the emblem on the starfleet uniforms , which kinda looks like a lopsided, inverted "U", is the graph of warp speed or something like that? I have to find the book again.

Posted By: Bmat Nov 27, 2001 - 05:20 pm

Guinan would be fun! She was one of my favorites!

Posted By: Dark Knight Apr 28, 2002 - 06:22 pm

I agree with what you lot say where were the women?,

Artificial gravity in the cargo modules yes a mistake, there.

Apart from that it was a good episode.

I wonder if you all know who the chef is now?

Posted By: ZimNova Apr 28, 2002 - 09:20 pm

DK....small spoiler about chef.
All we know for sure is he/she is Human. We have still never seen this person.