Awakening

The Vulcans are being betrayed by an overzealous leader. Meanwhile Archer, having been melded with great Vulcan knowledge, begins to lead the people on the desert. Once Enterprise is driven away, the Vulcan's attack the outpost. Archer begins to have visions. He is connected with the ancestry of the Vulcans. He has knowledge that no one should have. There are great casualties on the planet. This is a truly interesting episode in that it integrates metaphysics with the down to earth logic that has been the wellspring of the pointy eared people.

Enterprise made the same mistake the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the slow motion trainwreck of making right now. They didn't trust their worlds and characters and stories and went way way way way too big to make it even more epic and exciting.

Except when you do that ironically instead of feeling bigger and epic and exciting and more, what happens is you come up against what can be represented in a reasonable budget and believably portrayed on screen. And so rather than feeling immense and incredible, you end up coming across rushed and threadbare, honestly even a bit silly.

I am just going to say it: the whole "epic" time travel Xindi storyline was so catastrophically stupid and so far beyond what the writers and the budget of the show could support that it literally doomed Enterprise to an early failure and nearly ended Star Trek entirely.

It just never was going to make sense or ever be well conveyed. It never made sense that somehow ancient technology Enterprise was holding its own against multiple hostile factions with technology literally almost a millennia more advanced. It never made sense that Enterprise the explorer ship with very basic warp society technology was somehow fighting a significantly more advanced society defined by space war on their own home turf, that further was technically also the home turf of a hostile alien species with inconceivable technology so powerful it seemed godlike.

So in the process it just looked ridiculous and unbelievable. Archer was sacrificed on the altar of edginess destroying his credibility and all but guaranteeing he will go down as the worst, most unqualified, immoral, and weak Star Trek captain. All the the PR season 4 is trying to do is too little too late. It just is not believable. We saw how weak, how stupid, how hypocritical, how selfish, how fearful, and how profoundly unworthy Archer was for three seasons. The writers went out of their way to underline that. Repeatedly.

So why am I saying all of this on this episode? Because the few multi-episode plotlines of season 4 are literal orders of magnitude better and more interesting than the entire time travel idiocy we had to endure. I hate Enterprise. I don't think I will ever watch it again, it is just an annoying waste of time. But season 4 makes me legitimately sad at the prospect at what could have been if Enterprise had just been Star Trek this whole time and not been doing everything it could to be some kind of edgelord Star Wars with awkward casually misogynistic sexy scenes shoved in everywhere they could. The Augments plotline and Syrrannites plotline are both legitimately -good-. And both have excitingly, galaxy-spanning high stakes.

But both were shoved into three or so episodes each resulting in them being absurdly rushed with so many plot points to be tell not show because there was no time left. It is just such a depressing missed opportunity. Enterprise could have been some of the best Star Trek content yet while simultaneously modernizing it if it had spent a season or two each on epic but reasonable storylines like the augments and the syrrannites through the arching theme of the beginning of Star fleet and the federation.

Instead we got dark Archer, a lot of officers in their official Star fleet issue underpant, and a jawdroppingly dumb time travel turd of a story. What were the writers thinking? Who hired them? Who approved such terrible direction?

Captain Archer and T'Pol meet T'Pau in the sanctuary of the Syranites in the Forge and T'Pau denies the accusation of bombing the United Earth Embassy. Captain Archer and T'Pol are arrested and sooner he discovers that Syrran has transferred the mind essence a.k.a "katra" of Surak to him before dying. T'Pau decides to transfer the "katra" to her in a dangerous ritual but she fails. Meanwhile the Enterprise is unsuccessfully trying to rescue Archer and T'Pol. Commander Tucker is contacted by the Administrator V'Las and ordered to leave the orbit of Vulcan. Further, V'Las has the intention of bombing the sanctuary of the pacifists Syranites in the Forge and does not want that the Enterprise witnesses the attack.

"The Awakening" is another engaging episode of this excellent last season of Enterprise. The similarity of Administrator V'Las with the Lord of War is amazing, and the Forge might recall Afghanistan or Iraq, with historic treasures hidden in caves. The Enterprise heading to Andoria seems to be the promise another excellent show. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "O Despertar" ("The Awakening")

In these three "Vulcanian" episodes of Enterprise.

Back in Carbon Creek, Vulcans acted like Vulcans. Here, in the middle episode of this arc, they are squabbling teenagers with too much Vulcan- Sex-Juice, whatever the hormone is called on Vulcan, on Earth we call it something like "Testosterone".

These "Vulcans" and even their new "Surak" all act as if they are in the midst of Pon Farr and participating in the "Kalifi" part of "Kunat- Kalifi" - In other words, the raging kill-each-other stage.

Even the Vulcan Officials on the planet act this way. Sorry, I just didn't believe it.

Vulcans are not HUMANS. In these episodes, they are acting very much like humans, using deceit and treachery - Even offering violence and Destruction of the Enterprise, not to mention trying to destroy a whole group of their own people on the surface.

And this is supposed to be T'PAU. In The Original Series, this character was played by Celia Lovsky and she actually ADOPTED All of Nimoy's Vulcanian Mannerisms. She was a Vulcan's Vulcan. Here, played by Kara Zediker (Who was "The Golden Hind" in one episode of Hercules: Legendary Journeys, because Kevin Sorbo's wife could not get down to New Zealand at the time) she shows none of the GRACE and AUTHORITY of Celia's T'PAU.

Even the name, T'PAU has to be yelled out loud, and spelled with all capital letters, if you think of how she was in The Original Series- She was a Human, or rather Vulcan Exclamation Mark - This was a person to take very seriously- And In that episode, Starfleet backs way down for her.

I do not believe that this is the same T'PAU. This is rather, T'Pau: lower case T'Pau. Kara has NONE of the Earned Authority we grant the older version, and it is not enough to explain this away as a "younger version" - Because even a younger version would at least have the same accent!

I'm surprised Andre Bormanis would write this episode, he was one of the main science consultants for Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. I don't fully blame him, it was the Direction. Roxann Dawson, although being exemplary on a few Voyager episodes, fails to make us believe in any of this.

T'Pol's mother "T'Les" is in these episodes, Joanna Cassidy. Had she played the character more like "Zhora" from Blade Runner, I would have believed it more.

So I give this episode 15 points for the effects as usual, but I give the episode -7 points for the masticating of traditional Vulcans.

Because I do not believe ANY of the so called Vulcans in these episodes. Vulcans, especially female Vulcans have a beauty and a Grace and a solemn charm, like the Elves from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Vulcans should be more like Galadriel or Elrond, and less like Gimli- Or Azog the Destroyer as they appear here!

This episode is a continuation of the previous one. In the first episode, the Earth embassy on Vulcan is bombed--and the trail to the culprits leads to a mystical Vulcan cult, the Syrrannites. By the end of the show, you've learned several things--that the Syrrannites are NOT responsible but were set up AND Soval has learned the truth and was, as a result, thrown off the High Council!

At the beginning of this second part, Archer somehow KNOWS how to find the Syrrannites. Their hiding place is well hidden but somehow he goes right to it. How? He has the essence or soul of Surak inside him-- the father of logic and niceness in the Vulcans. At first, the Syrrannites don't believe this but through a mind meld they learn the truth. What's next? See the show...I don't want to spoil anything.

This episode is exciting start to finish and is definitely worth your time. It is a wonderful look at the future of the Vulcans--how they so quickly changed from duplicitous and nasty to swell folks who truly embrace logic. Among the best written of the shows AND it has some really cool corpses in the tunnels late in the program! See this one.