Looks like we're repeating the season now on UPN.

Wish that Trip's dream sequence had been the opening sequence. We'd have been going What the hell?, and not been slowed down by all those ...Previously's.

My girlfriend, in the next room, heard the mining foreman, and asked which character was drunk.

Wasn't there a reason all those Enterprise relays were coated with platinum? You mean they work just as well without the coating? No wonder there was a budget over-run on the refit!

"Sexual advances?" Naaaaaaaaaaaaah, no other reason to get naked.

Man, I loved that mining foreman. His weird shoulder-mounted equipment and his Olde Time Radio microphone were just super-cool. I was hoping for more really neat, Farscape-ish characters like that this year, but we didn't really get them.

Heh, I just looked at an old post I made in this thread:

I guess he didn't end up being one of the least memorable, huh? I'll always remember the guy who ate his own grandson.

Rewatching this ep made me realize what Trip may be talking about later in the series with the "all you did for me" references to T'pol. Maybe he's making the connection between her helping him "sleep" and his dealing with the emotions that made him Violent!Trip in this episode. The hand-on-the-shoulder bit was only the most recent part of that.

I had forgotten how "gah!" inducing the neuroporn was, despite the excellent acting that happened around it.

And the poor, poor mice.

I remember hating the neuroporn back then but looking back at it now it's not quite as bad... like many, many things this season, actually.

I just still love the way Trip shouts, "Intransigent????" And T'pol's deadpan response with the definition.

I love that, too. Mostly because I didn't think he knew what it meant anyway.

I loved that too. :) T'pol was in flat out Vulcan mode at that early date. I really liked Trip being half-dared to do it, rather than the sexual luring it seemed like she was doing earlier (though it did create that funny "sexual advances?" exchange).

From the recap:

Just this once, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Is the young Trip in Trip's dream sequence one of the Trips from Similitude? I think so but I don't remember the episode well.

Yes, it's the same young actor who plays Trip in Similitude. I think he did a great job.

I hadn't watched the Xindi since it first aired, and although I've always like the idea of Trip and T'Pol, I remember scratching my head with that first NP scene and thinking what the ....? But after the writers took such care to develop their relationship, especially from the Forgotten on, I rather enjoyed the humor and campiness of their first NP session.

So, I have a big problem with this episode -- the Nine-Fingered Xindi gives Quantum the coordinates to his homeworld. The Nine-Fingered Xindi also talks about the five species of Xindi, which doesn't include the Avians. Now, the Nine-Fingered Xindi wants Quantum to take him to his homeworld, so he clearly doesn't know that it was destroyed. The Avians were eradicated when the homeworld was destroyed so why didn't Nine-Fingered Xindi mention that species?

Hmmm... do we know how long Primate Xindi live? If they have very long lifespans, and he's been offworld for a long while, that could explain it. What was it, a hundred or a hundred and twenty years the planet had been destroyed and the Avians dead? Those would have to be very, very long, Vulcan like lifespans for that to hold water, though.

ETA: D'oh! Can't believe I didn't catch that, keckler. Er ... maybe he was just an extremely sheltered individual? :) No, I got nothing here. BTW, did he remind anyone else of Brad Dourif?

Whatever his age, he still should have included the Avians when he mentioned the five Xindi species. They became extinct when the Xindi homeworld was destroyed. Even if he didn't know about the planet -- which it seems he didn't since he was hitching a ride home -- he would have known of the Avians existance.

Setting phasers to "fanwank"...

Perhaps Frodo the Xindi was, in fact, fully cognizant of his homeworld's destruction, because he was a plant, put there to mislead Enterprise. His duty was supposed to be to let them beat the coordinates out of him, then, when they got close, say a day or so out, signal the Snake Eyes/Bug House attack fleet to come destroy the ship! However, finding that he was about to die, he chose to give the coordinates anyway, on the off chance that the fleet would locate Enterprise through some other means...

In that case, when the signal never came, I bet Dolum was pissed off enough to eat another grandchild!

My fanwank for the Nine-fingered Xindi was he was answering Archer literally. Technically, the Xindi don't have a homeworld right now, so he was giving the literal answer: where the homeworld used to be.

How he would think this would help Archer is beyond me and why he would use his dying breath to provide such a stupid answer, I don't know, but it is the only way that makes sense to me.

Maybe he was hoping they would find the rubble, shrug and go home. It's not like he would think the humans finding the Xindi would be a good thing for his people.

Again, my main question is the lack of the Avian inclusion in his comments.

If he post-dated the destruction and was leading the Enterprise off, he wouldn't include them.

Oddly, the Arboreal scientist who Archer spoke to seemed to forget for a moment that there were five: "Five? Oh, I suppose there are only five now." It's possible that it took years for the Avians to "die out" (I'm still hoping for a return, despite all), and they had finally become extinct shortly before this season, but the ultimate cause was the destruction.

But those two points don't match. I think there was a bit of sloppy writing and planning here. Here's another problem: If the Avians were well established on other worlds, as we saw, why would destruction of the homeworld affect them?

I assumed that he knew the planet was destroyed. He just wanted to escape, not necessarily be brought back to his homeworld. So, he didn't mention the Avians because he knew they were extinct. And he gave the coordinates to the destroyed planet because he's an ass and that's what Archer asked for.

The biggest problem with that theory, though, is Phlox's comment that he was in a lot of pain when he gave the coordinates. I mean, why do that if you're going to be an ass? So, the best explanation is that the writers weren't all that careful with the fine (and large) details of the story arc. And with such a pointless plot point. Why show a destroyed planet? In a couple of episodes (The Shipment) you're going to explain it all anyway.

That's the same question Dr. Mathra asked over and over again during "The Council."

I also think Nine-Fingered Xindi knew about the destruction, and gave those coordinates as a mislead. Otherwise, he's a bit of a traitor to his people. Anyway, I definitely think that's a fanwank and the writers just hadn't thought of the Avians yet.


Maybe they're like salmon and have to swim upstream to the homeworld to breed? And without the homeworld, they either couldn't breed, or weren't motivated to.

I'm usually one of the first to fanwank, but the Avians were a very sloppily written unnecessary dead end plot point. Clearly, the writers only thought of them after this episode. And I couldn't figure out why the Avians were gone if they had a perfectly intact stronghold on a different planet which the Council use for meetings. As far as I can tell, they were written in so that all the Xindi species could act nostalgic about how the Avians used to "darken the skies."

Yes, what WAS the point with them? Was it just a red herring so we thought they would all turn up and ... I don't know. Was it to show what the Xindi had already lost? I'd love to know what was supposed to happen, because surely something more was.

It also allowed us to see that even the Reptialians were sincere, in their way, in that they mourned the death of the Avians and drew from that a determination to protect the Xindi at all costs. Sure, Dolum had ulterior motives (power), but he used this rhetoric to sway his people, so they seemed to believe it.

I find it rather refreshing that they were mentioned without all of a sudden showing up. I suspect that some would have bitched about the writing being too predictable if the Avians had swooped in at the end and saved the day (I know that I would have).

I think that's just it-- the loss of the Avians give the Xindi their "never again" motivation.

You're probably right. If not for the Avians, the only reason the Xindi would have had for destroying humanity was because the Guardians told them to do so, which would seem really coldblooded. It would have been hard to believe that the Xindi later joined the Federation, although I still don't see how that's possible now.

The Guardians seem to have been elevated to almost God-like status in Xindi society. It’s therefore entirely plausible that the word of the guardians would be enough to spur at the least some Xindi to genocide – for a variety of deeper reasons: Fear for ones family as Degra or pure power-lust as Dolum. To the Xindi the loss of the Avians is a shared fault in contrast to the supposed threat from Earth which is entirely external.

I agree it was plausible that the Xindi would have committed genocide on the word of the Guardians alone, but I meant it would be harder for the audience to believe that the Xindi eventually joined the Federation if they did so. I think we can understand why the Guardians were worshipped, but committing genocide crosses the line between understanding the Xindi and thinking they're batshit crazy.

The Avian Extinction explains why the Guardians chose the Xindi over some other species to be their instrument-- they had already shown a willingness to go to extremes and kill off an entire species, even if it was one of their own.

Or they figured it would be easy to exploit the guilt by turning it on another planet. But why build the spheres in the area they did (and at that time), and risk making the Xindi suspicious?

I don't think it was ever really explained but I don't think that the Golden Girls could show themselves in our dimension without the presence of the spheres... or am I completely mistaken?

ETA: tothemax, a possible parallel is the Third Reich where a select group of complete loons (albeit with great persuasive powers) managed to go very far towards exterminating not only one but many groups. Today no one (or very few) questions the right of Germany to be a part of the European Union.

I believe that's right. That is why they could appear on Enterprise when the ship was trying to destroy the sphere network- they were inhabiting the super-charged space around Sphere 41 or whatever it was.

Hmm, I think that it would have worked as well to say that Xmillion Xindi died in the civil wars, rather than making the victims exclusively one now-extinct species. It was too misleading.

Silja, good analogy. I did not think of that.


I still don't get why the Xindi did a test attack against Earth. Why not some random planet in the Expanse?

I have a theory as to why that was. Maybe the Xindi thought that Earth would be frightened of the big bad universe, and cease all space travel, not unlike what Q tried to do introducing the Borg. They had hoped that the Earthers would spend the next number of years trying to figure out who did what they did, not sending ships into the Expanse. It would have worked, too, were it not for that meddling Temporal Shower Guy.

That would mean the Xindi were actually being sympathetic and the first attack was just a warning shot -- kill a few million to avoid being "forced" into genocide.

I would love to see a Xindi explain that reasoning to Trip. Heh.

Maybe part of the purpose of the first probe was just to see if they could get a weapon to Earth. I mean, why build the huge one and send it out just to find out you run out of gas halfway, or there are six billion defensive platforms? And in "The Xindi" (hey-- topic!) the one Primate-Xindi remarks that they thought the humans had no way of knowing who launched it.

This doesn't work with the "kill all humans" attitude they later took. (Strange how "Meet Market" discussions seep into my subconscious.)

RiverThames, I think the gas explanation is the best one I've heard.

I'm not thinking sympathy so much as a desire, by the Sphere-Builders, to throw Earth into chaos and panic. Problem is, with the Gas Theory, is why was it necessary to rip Florida (and Venezuela) a new one? Just send an unmanned probe to send back data. But, if you can cause chaos on Earth from an unknown source, it makes them less likely to fight back.

Unless it makes them more likely to.

I think that the first attack will remain a big huh from a plot point of view. This is one of the topics that's been going strong for a long time now and each time we talk about it we end up with two options: Either the probe was sent to make sure that it could be done (the 'gas' theory) or to scare mankind into staying out of the business of the rest of the galaxy (the 'they don't really understand humans, do they?' theory). In the real world I think that it was simply an effective (and easy) way of introducing a new enemy and give some much needed motivation to the characters. Maybe we'll have to make due with that depressing reason.

Something else to consider: we know the pilot of the probe was a Reptilian. Perhaps he, personally, was a bit more overzealous in his actions than his original mission parameters entailed.

If it was simply meant to be a harmless probe there would have been no need to arm it with, eh, whatever a device that can plough through the ground like that is called. Therefore there would be no opportunity for the pilot to become overzeleaous.

I'm sure this is the real reason, but in the spirit of fanwanking, we know that the Xindi assumed the humans wouldn't figure out who did it, and they wouldn't have without Daniels and Temporal Shower Guy. So I think the Xindi needed proof that this type of weapon would work on Earth in the first place, and things like how much of a blast yield they'd need. For all they knew, Earth could have some weird property that would make their weapon ineffective. Why bring the Mega-maid all the way there if it wouldn't work? And since they were going, why not start killing all the humans now?

Yeah, I know there are a thousand reasons why not, but I tried.

This is one more thing on the list of things that make my head hurt!

Always a risk.



You introduce enough energy into any object, it's going to go boom. That's at the crux of the Death Star Debate.



Well, were that the case, their cheif engineer would just had to realign the phase converter or some such thing.

I canna do it, Dolum. We don't have the power!

Oh, please. You can always reconfigure the deflector array.

Especially if you reverse the polarity.