27 – Shockwave, Part 2

Grade: B-

Summary

When we last saw the Enterprise, it was under attack from the Suliban, and Captain Archer had been sucked 800 years into the future. Something has gone wrong, and there has never been a Federation. The time portal technology doesn’t exist, and Archer is stranded in a future that should not have taken place. So he has to find a way to return back to his time and make things right, which once went wrong. Sorry.

Commentary

So often, the second half of a two-part episode turns out to be anticlimactic, but this one was a good conclusion to a pretty good ending for the first season. My only complaint is that it is becoming increasingly more evident that Braga and Berman became more concerned about viewership than they were about creating good stories. In this episode, Hoshi loses her shirt for no reason other than to give people something to talk about and look forward to seeing in the next episode. It would be nice if they could trust the writers, directors and actors to make stores that the audience would care about without stooping to new lows.

Here’s an example of lazy writing. Captain Archer asks Daniels for an explanation as far as time travel, etc., and Daniels just says “you wouldn’t understand.” Basically this means the writers either couldn’t come up with a way for Daniels to explain it, or they really don’t care if we as the audience understand. It’s a bit nuts for this to happen in Star Trek of all places because most episodes have a fair amount of technobabble that makes no sense anyway. So yeah, maybe the writers thought they were being clever, but I just call it lazy.