"Damages"

[Mr. Atoz]

This is the episode where Archer made an unprovoked attack on a ship of peaceful explorers, in order to get ahold of their warp coil. He needed it because his own had been damaged in battle with the Xindi.

We also discovered in this episode that T'Pol had become addicted to kellicite.

[Lexi]

Damage was a very good episode.

Although I recall that T'Pol was addicted to trellium-D, not kellicite - trellium was the substance that they used to line ships' hulls to protect them from the spatial anomalies in the Expanse (and that damaged Vulcans' neurological pathways) and kellicite, I think, was the substance that the Xindi needed to make their weapon.

But I may be wrong.

[Mr. Atoz]

I may be wrong, too.

[Mr. Atoz]

I didn't like the episode because it seemed like a contrived situation (perhaps to placate those people who accuse Star Trek of being too "goody-goody"). The situation had the ship's engines damaged at a time when they desperately needed to rendezvous with the Arboreal/Primate factions of the Xindi. Starfleet officers are proverbially resourceful people. How many times have we seen them pull a miraculous repair job at the last possible moment? Or come up with some means of getting around the problem (perhaps by re-configuring the phaser coil as a warp coil?)? Or figuring out a new means of sending a message that the Reptile/Insectoid factions wouldn't intercept? But no, they couldn't do any of that because the story called for Archer to be forced to do something unethical.

And T'Pols situtation -- that should have been a really dramatic scene, where she throws his own words back at him ("We can't save Humanity by abandoning what makes us Human.") -- culminating with the impassioned scream, "I won't let you DO it!" That should have brought down the house, coming from a supposedly emotionless Vulcan. But Archer shrugs it off with a simple, "We've had our disagreements, but you've never taken it out on my desk before."

[Lexi]

I agree it was a little improbable, but this was early days and I suppose we can go with the fact that Tucker being the legendary engineer that he was, he had no previous amazing engineers to learn from.

And yeah, Archer really should have reacted more, but I suppose he was feeling guilty about it.

[Mr. Atoz]

Mar 8, 2009 10:42:16 GMT -6 Lexi said:

And yeah, Archer really should have reacted more, but I suppose he was feeling guilty about it.

I took it that he was extremely stressed from his own situation, and so it didn't have the impact on him that it should have.

But it was a wasted gesture on her part, because two seconds later she backed down! That's what really annoyed me.

[andrewlee]

This was an interesting episode though not my favorite. I got the impression Archer took the warp coil from the aliens because he thought it was his only option. It was a means to an end in the success of his mission to find and stop the Xindi from destroying Earth! He did give supplies to the aliens, so they could survive their long trip home at impulse. This showed me he was remorseful in his actions!! If there was another way, I think he would have done it. I don't know if a phaser coil could be modified for the warp drive, but it is an interesting idea!!

[Mr. Atoz]

And you know, they never did try to find those aliens to find out if they made it home or not! They went straight from that to the attack on the Xindi weapon, and when that was over, they ended up in the alternate "Stormfront" time line.

[andrewlee]

Dec 7, 2009 9:25:12 GMT -6 Mr. Atoz said:

And you know, they never did try to find those aliens to find out if they made it home or not! They went straight from that to the attack on the Xindi weapon, and when that was over, they ended up in the alternate "Stormfront" time line.

This bothered me! They should have at least sent another ship to replace the warp coil they stole from them in the interest of good interstellar relations!