OEEG: Breaking the Ice

Foreward: Breaking the ice is the first Enterprise episode I'd actually say I enjoyed, which is a funny thing because its plot is moronic. Fortunately what saves this episode is the fact that the plot is actually a minor part of the overall story. That's pretty much what Enterprise needs to do: stop trying to come up with your clever plots, because you suck at them. We were brought back to this early era supposedly to tread new ground, yet we keep getting stories that could just as easily be done in TNG or Voyager. Observe:

Fight or Flight: Aliens harvesting other aliens for fluids when our crew comes along. Just a different bit on Vidiians. Language barrier subplot has shown up numerous times.
Strange New World: Landing on an alien planet and everyone gets trippy. Could easily happen on any of the series - in fact, it's not far off from The Naked Time/The Naked Now.
Unexpected: The "male gets pregnant" plot has been circulating since TNG.
Terra Nova: Coming across a lost colony of humans turned cave men. It's a small twist on The 37s.
The Andorian Incident: Suspicious enemies break into temple searching for spy equipment. Just trade the Andorians out for Romulans and the story would work the same.

See, here's the problem: these guys have been telling the same stories for so long that they just can't stop. They said they wanted to tell new stories, but they're not - they're telling stories that can be done in any era. Fight Or Flight, for instance: the main reason they're out here -to meet new civilizations- is actually handled entirely in the Captain's Log! Why? Because the story can't be about meeting an alien species, it's got to be about fighting and corpses and "mystery" (which I put in quotes because to call it a real mystery would imply it was actually solved). This does not feel like a new era just because you're wearing ballcaps and the Vulcans are assholes.

Oh, by the way, I've just backtracked to add this little bit on, because I hadn't noticed it the first time through. This is the first episode we've had that was not written by Berman and Braga. I assure you, I said everything above (including it being the first episode I enjoyed) assuming they'd written this one, like they had all the others. I guess I should have known when I wasn't rolling my eyes every few minutes.

Description: The episode opens with Tucker and Dr. Phlox looking over some pictures sent by Tucker's nephew's class. The kids are learning about Enterprise and they made this for the crew to show their appreciation. Nice... except, if the Enterprise is Earth's fastest ship, how did they get here? Or does the Enterprise have a fax machine that prints in crayon? See, if you're on the cutting edge of exploration, you can't just have FedEx constantly showing up. Out on the frontier (and you know, the final frontier? anybody home?) you're supposed to have a sense of being cut off, not of being just up the road.

Despite this, the crew does manage to begin doing some actual exploration when they discover a comet. Being the science officer, T'Pol naturally doesn't give two shits about it, but Archer wants to explore it because it's the biggest they've ever seen. So, while that's being set up, T'Pol has a transmission presumably in Vulcan and we cut to her and Tucker down in the mess hall. She seems preoccuped with the message, so we can understand why she'd sit at a table with the biggest motormouth on board, with the possible exception of Phlox. But without this we wouldn't be able to set up the Problem she must deal with.

Back to the exploration, and it turns out the comet contains eisilium, a mineral (thank you, Lord, for not making it an element, lest I have to kill again) so rare even the Vulcans haven't obtained enough to study it. They decide to collect some, but it's too deep to beam out, so Archer sends Reed -who's actually competent- and Mayweather -who's been in space- to go drills out some samples.

While they get ready to go do that, a Vulcan ship shows up. The captain is, of course, unpleasant because he's a Vulcan and this is Enterprise. They have no interest in the comet, but are interested in Archer being interested in it. If only I could be interested in his being interested in Archer being interested in it. Archer and Tucker share a Meaningful Look, and Archer takes T'Pol aside to talk privately. He asks what's really going on, because just being curious isn't Vulcan. Uh huh. This racism is starting to get a little annoying. He complains that the Vulcans have been constantly following them around - yup, like just last week, when they completely missed the Andorians invading and escaping from one of their intelligence gathering centers with information that could lead to war, or when the Enterprise crew was nearly slaughtered by aliens for their juices. See, paranoia is often exhibited by street crazies.

Meanwhile, where people aren't ranting for no reason. Travis and Reed land on the comet. As I said, this bit does manage to actually capture the sense of exploration that this series is supposed to be about. When they step out and stand there, they look like two men who have just done something no one has ever done before, and are awed by the moment.

Back in the land of paranoia, Tucker calls Hoshi down to Engineering for something. At first I cringed, wondering what they were going to have our communication officer/translator do that has nothing to do with her job this week, but it turns out that there's something that looked like a message. Hoshi confirms it's an encrypted transmission sent from the Vulcan ship to T'Pol's quarters. Archer is disappointed that she wouldn't tell him about this, and orders Hoshi to decode it, top priority. I guess she'll have to postpone being frightened by everything around her for another time.

In keeping with the theme of "we really are explorers" we see Archer and the bridge crew recording the answers to the questions of the kids from back home. This scene isn't very long, which is good - all it needs to do is really establish what is going on. The idea of support back home for the space program is one that pretty much was never touched on in the previous series, and a natural one, especially when you consider how little support there is today for our space program. There's only one problem I have with it, and that's that this is directed to one specific school... in fact, to one specific class. Every other kid in the world, well, you'll just have to dream about hearing Archer give his bad speeches; as we've established, speechifying is not something Archer is very good at, and right now he's even more impressive in his efforts, like a cross between George Bush Sr. and a semophore operator. Still, I must award Phlox with the Annoying Character of this episode for his long, rambling answer to one of the questions. It's moments like these that you can see why some people call him Dr. Neelix.

Everyone gets a question, so it's no surprise that Tucker gets stuck dealing with the question of shit. What happens to it? As Archer put it, "It's a perfectly valid question." So Tucker explains that they turn their crap into boots - that's useful, I guess. At Paramount, they turn their crap into Enterprise scripts.

Back on the comet, Reed and Mayweather are hard at work getting the charges set up to get their sample. I guess you can't have Reed involved without leading to an explosion sooner or later. They also take the time to build a snowman on the comet. Silly as that is, I actually like this bit (especially later when they add some big Vulcan ears). Sure, not exactly what they're here for, but then, Alan Sheppard played golf on the moon; even pros are going to have a little fun every now and then.

Oh, and now we're back to the secret message. Hoshi cracked the code, but she didn't translate it because she didn't want to read it. She tells Tucker to go put it in Babelfish if he wants to read it so bad. Well, it turns out it's the message we saw at the beginning for T'Pol, and it's a very personal letter. Tucker rants about the Vulcans, that it's their fault he broke in and read the letter. Jesus, can your racism run any deeper, Cooter? Eventually, he decides he'll tell T'Pol he read it, which he does in his own idiom: long, rambling, pointless. Finally, T'Pol asks what the hell he's going on about, so he explains. She's quite annoyed with him as he tries to apologize. Naturally, since Archer knows that Tucker's going out there to apologize, he interrupts by asking T'Pol to come meet with him so that Tucker can't finish smoothing this over. Thanks for the help there, big guy. You can see why he's Tucker's best friend. He wants to have a dinner party to convince the Vulcan captain that everything's fine and that he should just go away. T'Pol says she'll help, but when we next see her, she's speaking with Phlox about a headache. Has he been talking to you? That might be the reason. Seems it's caused by tension, but aside of a personal letter from home, having Tucker go through her things, and Archer shouting at her, I don't see any reason for her to be stressed.

The dinner goes about as well as you might think. The Vulcan is stiff to the point of annoyance - you'd think that the Vulcans, with thousands of years of interstellar travel experience, would have their captains be a little more diplomatic. Archer holds himself up rather well, but then, this meal is set up to make the Vulcans look bad, so I shouldn't really be surprised. The deck is really stacked against them on this series. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out they were the ones to tell the Borg where Earth was. Anyway, the meal finally ends and Archer has security escort the Vulcan back to his ship.

Down on the comet, Reed and Travis (the guys actually doing something this episode) blow out a crater and start a-drillin'. However, the explosion has caused the asteroid to spin differently and it'll wind up in the sun. If you saw Deep Impact, then you know what that would mean: the surface starts to go snap, crackle, pop. Reed's told to get the job moving, but it seems for once they'll be done with time to spare. Yup, I'm sure that's what's going to happen, as I have never seen an episode of Star Trek before in my life.

In the meantime, T'Pol has asked Tucker down to discuss the problem on her mind because Phlox said she needs to talk to someone, and he's the only one who knows what the problem is. You know what's disappointing is that this could easily have worked just as well with Hoshi in his place, and it would have actually made more sense that she would have decoded and translated the message instead of telling him to Babelfish it. This also would have allowed Hoshi to be more central in an episode without it being around how she's scared shitless of the ship and all aboard it, and had her interact with someone she rarely does. There are all these reasons why it could have happened, but we can't very well develop the secondary characters can we. After all, we don't have a Harry Kim in this series, so I guess we'll just need a new character to do it. You know, now that I think about it, have we ever had an Asian character be well-developed and interesting since Sulu was captain in Star Trek VI? You know, before Berman took over? So, I went and looked into this a little, and found out something else, that Garret Wang is the only Star Trek actor Berman refused to allow a chance to direct - in fact, just the first season of Enterprise has episodes directed by Michael Dorn, Robert Duncan McNeill, and two by LeVar Burton and two by Roxann Dawson, but he told Wang he wasn't running a film school. I'm not making an out-and-out accusation of racism here, but when you keep making the same minority the butt of your jokes and deny them opportunities of other cast members, it certainly makes you scratch your head. Anyway, so the heart and soul moment is not handled by the Asian woman who was the logical choice for the role, but the guy who tells you that boots are made from poop. Yeah! Who won that war, anyway!

In spite of this, the scene itself is handled rather well. The issue is one of arranged marriages, which fans of the original series might remember from Amok Time. The issues are different this time, as it's about the conflict of desires of the self versus the demands of tradition (Spock just wanted to get some Vulcan ass). Tucker gets frustrated because it seems that she's already decided but keeps asking for his advice, even though she won't listen to it. Maybe she's practicing for when she's actually married.

Oh, back to the real explorer work and- No no no, why did you have to go and do this?! You were doing fine, episode. I even ignored it when your explosion made a noise, but this I can't abide. Travis tries crawling out of the hole, slips, and injures himself severely. First, it's a fall of maybe a yard at most. Second, he's on a comet! Even with all the equipment he probably weighs, what, a pound? Folks, how can you make a science error in Star Trek -the program that boasts of its scientific vision- that they caught in Armageddon? I mean, that's like having Napolean being outdone by Futurama's Zap Branagan. So Reed starts helping him limp back to the ship and, of course, the sun has risen, causing painted cracks to appear on the icy surface. They rush back to the shuttlepod, but of course the ice gives way and the pod plummets into a fissue. Dammit, have you people never seen astronauts on the moon?! And the moon has a diameter over four hundred times larger, so the mass difference is colossal! Seeing this thing fall is like watching someone break the sound barrier on a unicycle.

Enterprise sees what happens and checks to see what they can do. Looks like shuttle can't get out, so Archer decides to use the grappler, but they need to get in close. This requires some fancy maneuvering, so he kicks the helmsman out of his chair and takes the controls himself. I suppose it goes without saying that the helmsman pushed aside was Asian. So they go swooping in to get our required action bit for the episode in, because we can't have an episode that's all about exploration and character development, can we? No! They fire the grappler, but only get one hit, so all they manage to do is wedge the pod in. The Vulcans offer their assistance, but Archer's all pissy about them making fun of his ship, so he refuses. They then drop the pod and it crashes even further down the hole, but Archer still insists that they'll take care of it themselves. T'Pol points out that soon the ice will begin reforming and Travis and Reed will be buried alive, but Archer still insists that they not involve the Vulcans. T'Pol finally steps in and points out that it's a little stupid to risk the lives of two of his men just because he's worried about the size of his penis. He finally agrees, and the two are finally rescued.

So, with everything squared away, they say goodbye to the Vulcans. Archer offers to share their data since the Vulcans helped, and since this eisilium is so rare they've never been able to study it, you shouldn't be surprised that they have no interest in it. Uh huh. How sad is it that even the good episodes have plot holes you can drop a shuttlepod through?

T'Pol decides not to go back for the marriage, and we cut down to see her in her meditation chamber. The episode ends with a shot of pecan pie, because you see earlier she was stodgy and wouldn't eat pecan pie. Now there's a piece of pecan pie and... well, she's still not eating it. I'm sure that bookends things somehow.

Rating: 6

Fun Fact: Vulcans are immune to caffeine.

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