“Impulse”
Page 3 of 4anomalies, Enterprise will be disadvantaged whenever they are attacked by any of them. Of course Archer and crew will continue to suffer the damage to the ship and injuries to the crew caused by these anomalies. This also reminded me of the Klingon ship talked about in “The Expanse”. Will we find out why their bodies were turned inside out and how they could still be alive after that?
There’s more continuity in this episode. T’Pol in her paranoid state accuses Archer of blaming Vulcans for undermining his father’s work which goes back to season 1; Reed mentions the lab explosion when Trip and T’Pol tried synthesizing trellium; movie night makes a comeback and I liked the nod to Bob Hope who passed away recently when Trip mentions Hope and Crosby pictures and of course we get the mention of the Vankaara from season 2. T’Pol also talks about Vulcans and emotions to Hawkins and clears up the long-argued point that Vulcans do indeed have emotions but have greater control over them than say, humans. All this is good and no one can fault this show for lack of continuity within the series. Needless to say, the Xindi arc and the Expanse are very engaging and I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.
I do hope we get a bit more detail on the Macos and the Xindi. It would be good to see them get a little more fleshed-out. Villains like the Xindi afterall would be much more believable and effective if they had more substance. The Macos are also two-dimensional although I don’t know if they’d be interesting enough as characters to be explored. I don’t think a whole episode devoted to either would be all that interesting. Hawkins certainly has a personality, albeit that of a MACO. He automatically changes settings on his phaser rifle to kill when he sees that stun doesn’t work well on the Vulcans. Still, I liked how he and T’Pol bonded and how he was able to see her side of things.
I also liked how Archer genuinely seems to care for T’Pol. We’ve seen growth in both these characters and their relationship. This bodes well for the future as they are the lead characters along with Trip Tucker. These three need to be developed although I hope we see more development of the others as well. Trip’s relationship with T’Pol is also changing and growing albeit not in as deep a way. My favorite line in the episode: “I can’t try to save humanity without holding onto what makes me human.” Archer tells T’Pol after she asks him to leave her behind so the ship can be insulated with trellium-D. It was so, well, Star Trek.
One small nit again dealing with the gravity on an asteroid which somehow doesn’t sound right to me that it should have any. I’d also say the episode is predictable in some ways but all this can be ignored if only because the pace is so frenetic that you don’t have time to think about anything else but what you are watching.
This is an excellent action, horror/sci-fi episode reminiscent of movies like “Night of the Living Dead” and videogames like “Resident Evil” which are still very popular today and there’s no need to wonder why.
