Enterprise review: "The Catwalk".
(Episode 38)

Gold Star Bonus!

Well.

It didn't suck.

And that's a start.

While I saw plenty of opportunities to improve the script, these were ideas that the average mundane writer wouldn't have known about, so I can't fault them on that.

The Teaser's aliens warning Archer that he'll need to set a course at Warp 7 to escape the incoming shockwave showed this antiquated technology and its faults when Archer explains their top speed was only Warp 5.

It's also extremely important to point out that this was one of the very few episodes to NOT have Berman or Braga's name on it in any way.

This episode comes just one week after TV Guide reported the program's failing ratings and that the Producers were going to repair the problem by making the show "more sexier".

Therefore, you can forget about seeing any more "passable" episodes like this one as B&B continue to dumb the show down more.

Oh wait, we can't do that, because A) our pocession of the Suliban Cell Ship is continuity, and we have to assume our "casual" viewers missed that episode and will get confused, and B) continuity is for intelligent viewers and our show is for stupid twelve year-olds. Not just regular twelve year-olds, but the stupid ones who find beanpoles with BJ lips and a boy haircut sexy. It's in Braga's mandate.

Archer asks T'Pol if she ever went camping and she said no. Hello? Episode 4? Hello? You went camping with Tucker, Mayweather, Cutler and some other guy who got leaves stuck to him when he beamed up! Don't you remember? I remember. Why can't you? Hello? It was called "Strange New World" by the way.

When the Producers of FOX's "Twenty-Four" make 24 hours of a single day exciting, yet the Producers of Enterprise can't even make 8 days compacted into 39 minutes of new footage exciting, why bother to watch?

In "A Night in Sickbay", a time stamp kept appearing on the screen even though nothing time-sensitive was happening. At least in this episode it would have made sense to put a Day Counter on the bottom of the screen. All too often television shows have events that span many days play out over 42 minutes, with no clear breaks in the days, like in TNG's "The Next Phase" when Geordi and Ensign Ro were "cloaked" for "two days", yet there was never any indication or hint that night time ever took place in the episode. Here they repeat this, where there are now seven night-times that occur off screen.

Opening Act One with the words "Day One", and breaking each day down to short segments would have been easier to watch, follow, plot AND write.

Ignoring the fact that aliens were able to dock on a starship without needing to drill open the door locked from the inside, and also ignoring the fact that they thought the ship was abandoned even though it was MOVING due to Mayweather piloting and maneuvering it to avoid the worst of the shockwave, and even giving the crew the possibility that so far up in the rafters they couldn't hear the ship wrecklessly hard dock in a shockwave storm, why didn't their sensors detect them? Yeah, they shut a bunch of stuff off, and yeah the shockwave enterferred with other stuff, but Mayweather wasn't flying blind, you know. They at least had something going to tell him where to avoid the "worst of it".

Three things come to mind that apparently didn't come to the minds of the writers.

1 - Knowing they are surrounded by radiation, why did they choose to ONLY bring just THREE space suits with them to the raftors? To have the characters purposely do foolish things to create a false jeopardy in your story should not belong on a "Star Trek" series.

2 - Knowing they are surrounded by radiation, why did they NOT bring any RADIATION Suits? Are the regular spacesuits all-purpose and protect from lethal radiation, TOO? To have the characters purposely do foolish things to create a false jeopardy in your story should not belong on a "Star Trek" series.

3- Knowing it was already established in Act One that the Sickbay has shielding to protect the crew, just not many crew, why were there no scenes of the combatant crew hiding out or regrouping in the safety of sickbay to buy them more time outside the protection of the catwalk?

Interestingly, this comes literally days after "Nemesis" bombed in the box office, and also days after Berman declared that Enterprise's failures in the ratings were because us viewers are stupid and we weren't ready for this show. Sorry, Berman, but we're always ready for a good show. Are you ready to make one? No? Then quit.

Come on. Where was the damage when that ship forcefully detached off the Enterprise during a nebula full of shockwaves?