Enterprise review: "Breaking the Ice".
(Episode 8)

Didn't Spock have a problem about a pre-arranged marriage that he also dropped out of?

Yes. Yes he did.

At the least you could have covered a story not yet explored. What if T'Pol's fiance was coming up on the Pon Farr, and T'Pol has to decide to pop her fiance's cherry or permanently lose him to another woman. The Pon Farr has never been explored from a woman's point of view. Now I guess it never will.

In case you didn't read the above line, I'll elaborate. T'Pol says the chemical psyllium that is buried in the comet is so rare, even the Vulcans have very little of it and not enough to study properly. Yet throughout the entire episode, the Vulcan Captain repeatedly stated that he simply does not care about anything Archer is doing, nor does he even care about the comet.

To make matters worst, Archer doesn't confront the Vulcan Captain about the comet's rare-to-Vulcans chemical contents at all even though everything is so obvious to us viewers.

If these Vulcan starships were following Enterprise, where were they when Enterprise was under attack in "Fight or Flight"? Where were the Vulcans during "The Andorian Incident" when the Andorians flat out took over a Vulcan monastery (for the third time in a row)?

Since Enterprise took off ahead of schedule and made several unexpected stops in "Broken Bow", just watching the Vulcans trying to locate the starship and catch up to it alone would have been entertaining if done right.

So, out of the blue out of nowhere, we suddenly unexpectedly learn that Enterprise has been followed by a plethora of Vulcan starships throughout the series up to now (all off screen of course), only we never saw any before and it was never mentioned before.

Right.

Archer and gang were answering questions from a specific fourth grade class in Ireland? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have Archer answer questions from children all around the world?

Yes. Yes it would have made more sense. That's probably why it wasn't done. Because it made sense.

I'm sorry. I just had to put that there.

Instead of a five-minute segment where Archer and gang filmed some answers for a small fourth grade class, a news crew onboard to film this stuff for them and causing troubles for Archer and gang in the middle of a crisis had so much more potential.

Although "Babylon 5" often screwed up the idea of a news report from the station on multiple occasions ("The Illusion Of Truth" being the worst retread), it did do it kinda good with the episode "And Now for a Word". "Xena" did a comedic turn with reporters with "You Are There". In the original "SeaQuest" bible, there was a news reporter character planned who was to cause much trouble for Captain Bridger, an idea that could have contributed greatly to a few first season episodes if done right. Plus there was the opening of "Star Trek: Generations" that showed the reporters buzzing around the Enterprise-B bridge. And let's not forget "The X-Files" episode "X-Cops" that showed how the news crew could alienate the main characters all the way through.

And here was an episode of "Enterprise" screaming out for this. And with the historic missions and journeys of Starfleet's first starship, having a documentary crew show up at least once was kinda common sense.

As explained above, the potential for a news reporter, news team or school documentary filmmakers interferring with Archer's missions was priceless.

Instead it's all thrown aside so we can get a poop joke from the country bumpkin.

What could have been done to also add to the problems of Archer and gang answering school children's questions?

Having it be broadcasted live to Earth.

And yet another missed opportunity: actually showing the kids in a class react to the tapes transmitted by Archer. Listening to a whole room full of children all go "Euwww!" at the same time would have been more funnier. It also would have been a better closing scene than T'Pol staring at a Pecan Pie she wasn't eating.

Just like J. Michael Straczynski, the writers of "Enterprise" are only getting jokes actually funny less than half the time.

And if Archer really believed the Vulcans were spying on the Enterprise to make sure the humans weren't going to "blow up the galaxy", Archer could have lured the expecting Vulcans into confirming this by tricking them into a trap with an open transmission to the school children, a news report, a live conference or a Starfleet report.

At the very least Archer broadcasting the school report on an open channel so the Vulcans could watch and learn too would have been cute. After all, the Vulcans were curious about the Enterprise just like the school children were. It all fit together. That's probably why it wasn't done. Because the pieces actually fit.

Instead, we get yet another round of "Vulcans are evil but we're not going to try to prove it", just like Trip not having Hoshi translate T'Pol's report in "Strange New World" even after he took it from her and suggested Hoshi could translate it. Or Reed's inability to comprehend scanning the Vulcan monastery for the spy array in "The Andorian Incident" just minutes after he complained about not spotting the Andorian ship due to lack of scans.

So here we have an entire episode that follows Archer's mistrust of the Vulcans because he thinks they are spying on him, yet not once was it ever brought up by anyone at any time about the fact that the Vulcans were just caught spying on the Andorian star system in "The Andorian Incident" about one or two weeks earlier.

"Well Ricky, Mr. Berman and Mr. Braga are under contract for multiple years to come. Mr. Braga has at least a three year commitment for a multi-million dollar salary that he won't ever give up as long as the miracles of modern technology allows him to 'phone it in'.

And Mr. Berman, just as the anti-christ, is immortal and can never be killed. He has all the Paramount Executives fooled into believing the beloved Trek franchise is safe within only his capable hands, so it will also be at least another three years for him, too, before we may possibly have good and talented people in charge again. And even then, Paramount can always renew their contracts until hell freezes over. Thank you for your question, Ricky."

So, T'Pol decides not to get married, and to relay this major life-shattering event in her life across to the viewers, the closing scene is T'Pol staring at a Pecan Pie she didn't want to eat to begin with?

To further complicate matters, she wasn't even eating it now. She was just staring at it. Whatever.