For instance, Starfleet might not meet the USMarine Corp ideal of gung-ho soldiery, but when your commanding officer tells you that details of a mission are classified they are by god classified. You do NOT continue to badger and whine for little details like a spoiled school child. But then considering the way they showed Trip taking command of Enterprise, perhaps infant is more appropriate. I can not comprehend how we are supposed to believe that someone who's in charge of a friggen warp reactor, the chief engineer who should be capable of making snap emergency decisions that could effect the lives of the crew should be such a wishy-washy non-committal commander. Sweet baby Jesus, right or wrong make a damn decision and stick by it, the crew and the audience would respect it more than that "I'll get back to you" crap.

Then there's T'Pol. Where to start. How about, who in their right minds tries to convice a Vulcan to let you go by playing off their emotions???? Logic, yes, pleas for mercy because of your family??? Gah

But that's okay, because B&B were there to ensure that this Vulcan had emotions to spare for this episode. Guilt, apprehension, anxiety and fear were running amok in poor Miss T'Pol. Good thing the captain was there to steady her so she could shoot M'nos in the back, even though it's completely contradictory to his stance for the underdog last week, but then what's consistency when you're raping a franchise?

We find that the emotional burden of having killed a man forces T'Pol to undergo a ceremony to purge herself of all memory of the events that led to the suspects death, a pretty crappy ceremony that falls apart the first mention of anything related to the event. No wonder it's no longer practiced.

Whatever happened to the stance that emotions could kill a Vulcan? Spock was half-human and didn't display as much baggage as this woman.

Ugh.

Guess I'm done venting.

For instance, Starfleet might not meet the USMarine Corp ideal of gung-ho soldiery, but when your commanding officer tells you that details of a mission are classified they are by god classified. You do NOT continue to badger and whine for little details like a spoiled school child. But then considering the way they showed Trip taking command of Enterprise, perhaps infant is more appropriate. I can not comprehend how we are supposed to believe that someone who's in charge of a friggen warp reactor, the chief engineer who should be capable of making snap emergency decisions that could effect the lives of the crew should be such a wishy-washy non-committal commander. Sweet baby Jesus, right or wrong make a damn decision and stick by it, the crew and the audience would respect it more than that "I'll get back to you" crap.

Have you ever tried to make a snap decision in a situation that you have no experience with? I actually felt for Trip in that situation; I've been there. I'm a system administrator and I have to make decisions about a network that affect my customers all the time. I have no particular difficulty making said decisions because I understand the consequences and have the overall picture for the whole of the network I'm responsible for. Now put me in the CEO's position. Now, I don't have the overview understanding of the whole company. If I had the "advisors" coming to me and asking me to approve something, I would be suspicious that they were trying to take advantage of my lack of knowledge and experience and I would be very worried that I will make a decision that is detrimental to the entire company.

Sounds a little like apples to oranges you say? Well, in the company I work for, the CEO is equivalent to the captain and the system administrator is equivalent to the chief engineer. (That is, in comparative responsibilities.) Both are equally important but very different jobs. I make a passable (possibly good) system administrator but that doesn't mean I can instantly fall into the roll of CEO!

Overall, we didn't see anything about Trip's captaining after he bluffed the Vulcans (any bet that comes back to haunt them). I expect that bluff was supposed to be the point at which Trip started to make the tough decisions although that wasn't made particularly clear. Certainly there was enough air time to put a couple of statements in about that at the expense of some of the excess with respect to T'Pol.

Sounds a little like apples to oranges you say? Well, in the company I work for, the CEO is equivalent to the captain and the system administrator is equivalent to the chief engineer. (That is, in comparative responsibilities.) Both are equally important but very different jobs.

Sounds a little like apples to oranges you say? Well, in the company I work for, the CEO is equivalent to the captain and the system administrator is equivalent to the chief engineer. (That is, in comparative responsibilities.) Both are equally important but very different jobs.

Having actually been in the military both as an peon and in a small command capacity (Technogrl is a Renaissance woman) I can ASSURE you that CEO's and systemn administrators are NOTHING like Captains and Crew. For one thing you are not expected to give up your life as part of your job description.... for another, you are not expected to take someone's else's. The previous poster had it SPOT ON when he diuscussed proper military protocol.

And, of course there is the whole fact that I never reread what I wrote before pressing "Post" which is clearly a stupid thing to do as I probably would have wrote something different (and closer to what I wanted to say).

If I had the "advisors" coming to me and asking me to approve something, I would be suspicious that they were trying to take advantage of my lack of knowledge and experience and I would be very worried that I will make a decision that is detrimental to the entire company.

Someone as highly trained as Tripp, to have the position he's in on that ship, should have no trouble making decisions and trusting the other members of the command staff. If the Dr. makes a recommendation to prevent the spread of a disease there is absolutely no responsible reason to ignore it unless you're in an active combat situation. To think that Tripp was more worried about his reputation with the crew than their health is reprehensible.

Then there's T'Pol. Where to start. How about, who in their right minds tries to convice a Vulcan to let you go by playing off their emotions???? Logic, yes, pleas for mercy because of your family??? Gah

Forgive them. It must have been the 100 years of evolution not yet seen in the Trek History that caused T'Pol to show an emotional reaction. Either that or T'Pol is really a Romulan spy! (Role eyes to heavens).

This story would have been better played off another character other than the Vulcan; like maybe Captain Archer's dog. Did the story make sense? Not altogether with the character they used. I would have enjoyed another character that made sense like the Chief of Security with this plot. However, it seems Universal is pushing T'Pol related stories, probably for her more visual qualities like the 7 of 9 show.

I give this 3 Ugs of 5 for my painful watching meter

I'm so starved for expressions of depth on Enterprise that when pseudo-depth shows up the temptation is to grab it and hug it like the Prodigal Son. But no, if you think it thru, this bad boy deserves a spanking...

Any story that's based on manipulating the audience's emotions by relying on the emotions of Vulcans is on shaky ground indeed. In TOS the two eps of this type that come to mind were Amok TIme and Journey to Babel - both classics. This was a pretty common element in the ST Movies. TNG and DS9 pretty much ignored Vulcan emotion stories, at least none spring to mind. Voyager got some mileage out of Tuvok in this regard but in general he was presented with SOME dignity - he never just flat cracked up and fell apart...like T'Pol.

The key to a Vulcan emotion story is to show the individual's will being reluctantly beat into submission by the dictates of Vulcan culture. At the end of the story, you're supposed to appreciate that Vulcans DO have emotions and yet be in awe of the lenghts they'll go to in repressing it to conform to their culture, which is NOBLE and WORTH such a sacrifice.

Now what have we got here? T'Pol fundamentally DISTRUSTS all aspects of Vulcan culture. Their government leaders are presented as conspirators, their religious leaders as bumbling witch doctors and their starship captains as stupid simpletons fooled by lil ole Trip. T'Pol is presented as a heavy with a license to kill going after some kind of Vulcan Col. Kurtz up the Mekong River in Cambodia that lies and smuggles and is a terrorist. We're never told WHY this guy chose this path...just that he DID. But wait...we see he really IS a bioweapons terrorist so any doubts we have against him were UNJUSTIFIED. So what was a shade of grey turns out to be black and white after all.... a typical Star Trek ending lately...

So with the basic principle of a Vulcan emotion story unfulfilled, this was just a mess. You don't believe in the Vulcan (T'Pol) and you don't believe in Vulcan (the culture). In it's way, this is as big a rip-off as last week's Klingon farce. It's just harder to see because it's cloaked in pseudo-depth instead of a Seuss poem.

The (ahem) "heart of darkness" in all of this is that usually a show goes a couple of seasons before scrapping the dregs of recycled movie plots just to make it from week to week. Last week was Seven Saumeri; this week was Apocolypse Now. What's next week? The Gods Must Be Crazy? I think it was almost better when it was the Cave Of The Week...

Totally ruining the idea of trek IMHO.