Are you excited? Well, are you, PUNK?

I wasn't watching too closely; did those aliens have half their face painted black, the other half white?

Thinly veiled attempt to talk about the palestinian-israeli conflict? Or 9/11?

Well, this was "Let This Be Your Last Battlefield 2: Photonic Boogaloo"

Best Line of the Ep: "Go ahead, try to blow yourself up; I'll wait."

At the climax, I kept screaming at the TV: "But she's Vulcan!! She can kick your asses!!!"

I wish they'd dealt more with the information about the Spheres being erased--does the erased information include the info about the Xindi?

Where was Hoshi?? And didn't the Aliens of the Week seem a little too...Bajoran?

Bajoran! Yes! Thank you! With the head wrinkles and the earrings...At least Porthos was there. The ending REEKED of "LTBYLB." Where was Frank Gorshin?

I didn't mind it; of course, I got to see Reed kick a little ass and Phlox actually do something. So that was good for me.

Yes, the LTBYLB flavour added just the right touch of Original-Series-ness. I loved Archer's transporter gag (he's damn lucky Crazy Priest Captain didn't come upon anything in his logs on that device).

Have the crew always referred to them as "Maaco's"? I found it odd actually hearing that.

Also wondering whassup with the deleted data. And Hoshi.

Me too. That was so annoying. I was really hoping for a Vulcan Nerve Pince.

I wasn't really paying attention at the beginning so did they explain why it was so easy for the hijackers to get into the Enterprise computers? Why wouldn't they have backups? Why didn't the lead religious guy not read up on the transporter? He seemed to know everything else.

I actually didn't think it was so bad. Archer was actually likable in parts and the female MACO didn't need to be rescued by Malcolm like I was expecting.

I liked it. Definitely kept my attention, good acting and some excellent lines (the aforementioned "Go ahead, try to blow yourself up"). Was totally BWAH! on the "DON'T FEED HIM CHEESE". :-)

Props to Bakula -- the expression on his face when Crazy Priest Captain (or as we called him, "John Ashcroft") deleted all of the sphere research was note perfect. Hell, *I* felt his pain.

A few random thoughts.

My dad first commented that they looked Bajorian, I thought the head ridge looked a bit more like a cross. On that note, B+B have made what I think is a Roddenberian episode. Only took them three series. And yes, the Bajorans are also religous fanatics (possibly relatives). What would be interesting, but HORRIBLY complex, would be that somehow Enterprise destroys the spheres, and in doing so, through a complex series of technobable, creates a stable wormhole near Triannon, and D'artangian (or whatever his name was) and his clan reinhabit the planet and change the name. But it would be horribly convoluted and never be canon. Hopefully.

What is the definiton of heresy? 9th day adventists v. 10th day adventists (and Keckler, feel free to borrow that terminology, as if you needed my permission). Again, very Roddenberian. And very hilarious.

Of course B+B used the incredibly shrinking vulcan strength.



That, the Crusades, India-Pakistan, and basically any religous conflict in history.



I'm sorry, I found this unforgivable. If I was ever given command of a starship, I would password protect AND make a hard copy of ALL essential data. Of course, I would never leave spacedock with an unfinished ship either.

Favorite part of the episode.
After Quantum breaks Reed out of his cabin
Quantum : "We're going to take back the ship."

Thank you Captain Exposition.

Also, the crew member that got blown up real good had kinda a blank stare on her face, even though this crew should know by now if you see something out of the ordinary, run the other way! Fast!

Wow, I've never thought that at all. These guys were killing people based on miniscule religious differences. The Bajorans never did that.

I thought it was very TOS-like in flavour. This, in my books, is A Good Thing. The religious "peace" John Ashcroft Alien was talking about - the peace of the grave. And the 10 day vs. 9 day conflict I found very believable; after all, look at how Christians have happily burned each other at the stake over matters just as minor.

By the way, what was up with that weird Archer/Trip interaction at the beginning in Engineering? He looked like he was going to deck the ol' Tripster. Did I miss something?

Once again Archer brings aliens he knows nothing about on board the ship and allows them to wander around unwatched. When he first decided to bring them on board he told Malcolm to use full security protocols, so you'd think that would mean security personnel would be escorting them around the ship and that they wouldn't allow the aliens near things like, oh say, the warp core. But no. The alien leader easily stations his suicide bombers around critical areas of the ship.
Stupid.

The other gripe, which I'm sure will annoy many, is T'Pol once again being tossed around by the aliens. The only reason this doesn't bother me more is because the aliens also kicked the crap out of Malcolm and the female Maaco so maybe they were supposed to be very strong. And my, but T'Pol really did not like the alien challenging her science did she?

Overall, this was an okay outing. It was a bit heavy-handed, but not too much so. Religious fanatics probably will exist forever throughout the universe. The alien leader (pre-nom?) was very well acted. Phlox and one of his creatures got to play a major role. And Porthos put in an appearance which is always a plus - loved that Archer got Phlox's attention with the message "Don't feed him cheese".

It was the Sneetches in Space!! I didn't get why CQ just let them wander around either. I liked the total burn at the end tho'. Showing them what their "war" did.

I got a weird thing off Trip/Archer at the beginning too- but I think Trip grabbed for Archer's shirt first.

As for LTBYLB- they even painted opposite sides of their faces.

I think T'Pol, at one point, was trying for a neck pinch.

As for the episode...not bad at all. To tell the truth, I didn't even see the ending coming, and that's with a TOS episode to consider. They didn't wrap things up too neatly re: the couple, but that's OK. Things aren't always neat. And there was even a touch of continuity, with the torture coming back to haunt Archer. Very nice.

A request: Can we please lay off the "Ashcroft" references? It's a bit...gratutitous.

Gadzooks, what a disspointing piece of "meh."

The only part that I found interesting was when D'Jamat tried to convince Archer of their similarities by pointing out how he (Archer) tortured the pirate guy in the airlock some episodes back. Had they followed up with that line of reasoning, things would have been much more entertaining.

I thought the 10 day/9 day conflict was overwhelmingly silly and pretty much undermined any credibility that the Breath Savers had. Instead of presenting the hijackers as complex characters and investigating the ways in which all those people could have been turned to fanaticism, instead we got a new version of "which side of the egg do you break?" Yawn.

Oh, and about Archer's transporter trickery. Mighty convenient that he pulled it off, as in Kirk's day, such a move was seen as extremely risky.

Good eye, nelamm. I totally didn't catch that.

This ep also reminded me of the original series, which usually means a meh for me, but I liked it anyway. The ending was so anvilicious (sp?) but I just loved it.

SB did a great job, I thought. When the Bajorans Gone Wild deleted the info about the spheres, the look on his face reminded me of the SB of Quantum Leap (the one that could act).

I totally didn't notice that Hoshi wasn't in the ep. I was too happy Mayweather had both screentime AND lines.

Coincidently, I watched "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" today. It's difficult to decide which was more heavy handed.

The transporter trick was neat, but it made the villians seem more like Pakleds in Bajoran makeup. The utter idiocy of the villians really made it difficult to cheer for the crew. The lack of communication between the groups of guards, for example.

I'm trying to come up with something interesting to say about this ep, but it's a little hard to think with this anvil embedded in my brain.



Word! We know more about prayer than space travel, but I can hit 3 buttons and erase all your data? The hell?
I'm sure T'Pol's got a backup file.

Did Mayweather talk? I saw him look to T'Pol for the confirmatory nod a few times, but I must have missed his line.

Agreed w/ Cpt. Snarky on one thing that did make me snorfle: "Go ahead. Try and blow yourselves up. I'll wait."

ETA was it just me, or was Malcolm's fighting double a little, well, blond? Maybe Trip was supposed to be in that fight?

Yeah, I caught that too. As soon as the "conflicted" terrorist dude said, "We believe that the Spheres were created in 9 days", I knew the heretics would believe they were created in 10. Quite heavyhanded.

I don't think they compare to Bajorans at all. While the Bajorans did resort to terrorism/freedom fighting during the Cardassian occupation, they did not go around killing people who didn't believe in the Prophets.

I called the leader guy DijonMustard. Finally, Quantum finds an enemy who's as stupid as he is. Can't believe he fell for the transporter trick.

This episode also reminded me of TOS, in a bad way. I also responded with "meh."


Exactly what I thought. Complete with the yawn. LTBYLB meets Lilliput.

I, like others, was highly annoyed at T'Pol's noticable lack of Vulcan strength. At first I thought that the aliens were really strong, but the MACO and Reed each held their own against the aliens pretty well -- much better than T'Pol did -- and they're measly humans. It's wholly disappointing. I kept wanting Buffy to show up and show T'Pol how to fight.

I noticed Hoshi walk across the bridge, and I noticed her decided absence when Archer told T'Pol to have Phlox look after Porthos. In "Shockwave I" it was Hoshi he asked to do that.

I finally managed to dig my way out of the pile of anvils I was buried under earlier while watching this ep. The writers weren't very subtle with the metaphor which isn't at all surprising with this show. They should've had Archer space the zealot after all the crap he pulled. Take the airlock scene from before one step further. Make him a little darker, more driven. To me it would've been more realistic.

Agreed. TOS was frequently heavy-handed, but I always thought "LTBYLB" was too heavy-handed. And this was a pretty direct copy. The 9-day vs 10-day thing was over-the-top silly, more silly than "LTBYLB".

And while we're comparing to previous Treks, VOY's "Basics" had a suicide bomber that we hadn't already been clued into. Much more creepy, because you're saying "what's this guy doing? Oh, that's - that's bad, it's - Oh." This time I was thinking, "the effect's kind of neat, but get on with it!"

I like my villains ambigious. This guy was not.

I did like the thing where he erased the data, though. Yay for long-term plotting! And I thought the bit with the transporter was clever.


He had some lines in the shuttlepod in the teaser. Must have used up his weekly line allowance. And he had to borrow from Hoshi to get that much.

During the ep, I was actually hoping for more of the religious leader's sermonizing featuring T'Pol getting all tetchy (the sermonizing on its own wasn't all that fun to watch, especially after it felt like he'd repeated himself to Archer a half-dozen times by episode's end). They may've had an interesting debate if he wasn't so narrow-minded. The plot had to move forward though and there was no time to focus on T'Pol.

While parts of the ep left me feeling antsy, overall it was a pretty solid effort. Manny Coto is 2/2 as far as I'm concerned, though this was nowhere near as affecting as "Similitude".

I didn't even realize that I hadn't seen her in the episode until I read that. Someone else pointed out that she walked onto the bridge, but I missed that.



Me too.



That also cracked me up.

Generally, I liked this episode more than I thought I would after reading the synopsis. I thought the deleting of the information, was interesting in that it threw a wrench into Archer's mission that will last beyond one episode, but it was stupid because the information shouldn't have been that easy to delete.

The first new ep of Enterprise I've seen in a few weeks, and it turned to be a big starship-sized "meh". I supposed it was to be some sort of homage to LTBYLB, but I never could get an idea as to why the odd-forehead-alien-leader-of-the-week could attract people who would even sit through an airing of Plan 9 from Outer Space, much less actually kill themselves and other people. And don't even get me started about the ending.

And I kept calling him D'Jim McDivitt, 'cause this actor played him in "From the Earth to the Moon." When we first saw him my comment to my wife was "Jim McDivitt finally made it past Earth orbit. But then I also commented "where is Frank Gorshin when you need him" at the ending.

Did the 9 day/10 day thing remind anyone else of the opening the boiled egg thing in Gulliver's Travels?

Thank you, Isaboe. I knew it was a Dr. Seuss book, but I couldn't remember which one. And I laughed out loud when they said the big conflict was whether the Makers had created the spheres in 9 days or 10.

Dijon Mustard. Hee. Once again, wombathefool shares my twisted sense of humor.

And when the hell will the Starfleet get some damn security on their starships ? Do these people lock up anything?

Actually liked what I saw of this ep. Liked Quantum this week. Will rewatch this weekend.

The 9/10 days thing bugged me, because it was so needlessly petty. They didn't even need to clarify the faith differences between the two sides. That didn't matter. Telling us what it was, and that it was such a meaningless distinction in dogma (especially with the leader complaining that humans "pay too much attention to numbers" or such earlier), when it could have been left ambiguous? Or really about something-- like the heretics think the spheres are the work of evil? It's just a cheap way to impart superiority to Archer.

This is the first time I'm posting in an ep thread for this show, so please be gentle!

Did anyone else think Archer's "Is that the faith you were raised in?" line was a little strange? I mean, how in the universe would he know if love, peace, and understanding was part of their faith? I can't imagine every religion in the universe would be peace-loving; look at Klingons, for cryin' out loud.

Grr. I'm having trouble expressing it, but I just felt that there were a whole heck of a lot of assumptions made about these aliens and their religion, and what they did, or did not, believe in.

And, as many others have said, where was the security? You'd think they'd have learned after all this time.



Heh. No lie. I actually reached over and bonked the husband on the head and said "Feel those anvils? Painful, isn't it?"

Yeah, and telling this guy who has followed a religious zealot across the galaxy "There are no Makers"- maybe not the best argument, there, CQ. Geez.

Guess Quantum missed the Windows 2025 training sessions.

I liked this episode. Loved the transporter trick, and I cracked up at the whole text-messaging-a-coup method (shades of Nemesis. At least he didn't tell Mayweather to ram the ship into something). Though I saw the parallels with Harrison Ford's character in Air Force One -- everyone's told that the leader's dead but he's secretly working in the bowels of the plane/starship to retake command -- it still worked here.

Porthos!! That is the cutest dog I have ever seen.

There's something about Mayweather that annoys me. I can't figure it out yet.

I love Phlox.

And, most shocking of all, I even liked Archer in this episode. His brows seemed.....I don't know........less furrowed.

The episode failed for me on three counts. One, giving aliens the run of the ship. Thought we learned this lesson already. Two, the fanatical leader not knowing about the Transporter (the name should have raised an eyebrow, don't you think?) even after reading the Captain's logs. Three, the tired deja vu ending. Wouldn't it have been much better if the fanatics returned to find their home world living in peace, all religious conflict resolved?

Meanwhile, over on Angel, an employee had to be sacrificed for the common good too, and that was kind of fun to watch.

I fell asleep right after the first dude blew himself up real good.

Come to think, I imagine the "we don't go for scans" thing was a ruse. So then why did Archer repeat it later, when he knew about the bombs?

What does it say about me that I actually thougt first of the "Butter Battle Book" by Dr. Seuss?

And I'm annoyed, because though I was okay with the episode until then, but that crossed the line into mockery and condescension.

Aaargh...too much self-righteous Archer. I spent this episode much this way:
"Oh they're not going to have him say that...damn, yes, they are."
Predictable, condescending, and meh.
Come on Manny, you can do better than this.

So the smaller group of aliens would be the (wait for it) "petite Triannons"? Thank you, try the veal.

I really enjoyed this one - very reminiscent of LTBYLB, but I've been a huge Trekker since 1973 so that's major points in its favor, imho. Be that as it may, I can see why they scheduled it as the first fresh episode in six weeks. My opinion might've been different otherwise.

I think the weird scene with Trip must've been edited or something. I got the impression Trip had been about to mouth off in a very dangerous way.

How many frickin’ times has Archer let some group of aliens take control of Enterprise? Seriously, it is hard to believe his superiors have not taken the ship away from him by now. In fact, the writers should file the “lose control of ship followed by fight to regain ship” plot under “Star Trek themes that have been beaten to death”.



The religious zealot hijackers were morons. Their logic was so flawed it was hard to believe they didn’t just walk into walls or fall down more often. The fact that they could pilot their own spacecraft and manipulate control of Enterprise, yet not accept technology, was absurd. How could the religious zealot ‘engineers’ swallow the lead zealot's irrational ideas?!

The fact that such a group of dingbats managed to overtake the ship makes the Enterprise crew look even more incompetent. Archer had better make a lot of ‘deletes’ in his captain’s log and blame it on the hijackers. . .

Come to think of it, when was this episode shot? Linda Park was in a play some weeks back and that might explain her absence.

The First Amendment, or at least the freedom of religion clause, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." comes pretty close to our Prime Directive. There is much wisdom there. Recognizing that there is much widsom there, not so wise. Just too much over the top preaching to the converted. Best work by Parthos and the Dr.'s bat, the only creatures onboard immune to sanctimony.

I'm still waiting for the episode where they find out that he's really an alien cyborg.

First time poster here. Was the "conflicted" zealot's name Yarrick? Every time they said his name, I said, "I knew him well, Horatio." Until my husband threw a pillow at me. At least I can make my own entertainment when the writers let me down, eh?

I think that's one of the primary objectives of TWoP.

And welcome!

I got a little frustrated with this ep.

1) Head!Zealot is adept with the computer system/logs but totally misses the point of the name "transporter"?

2) Site-to-site transport on ships was a big no-no and rarely tried in the TNG series, but it's a simple thang for CQ and crew? I distinctly remember this being mentioned in TNG season 1, but I forget the ep. Then again, I can fanwank this as "they don't know the technology well to know the danger" and let it go.

3) Reed's first scrap with grunt!zealot... I dunno, but it looked like grunt!zealot was tossing himself around and Reed was holding on.

4) Hello? Vulcan strength? Hello? T'Pol taught them Vulcan martial arts in season 2 and the best she can do is grab the guy around the neck and wrestle him? It was like watching Dr. Crusher and Troi bang baddies with bric-a-brac in Qpid!

5) If Triannon (sorry, I'm hearing Stevie Nicks wailing that name in my head right now) is blown to smithereens, where did the heretics come from and where did they go?

6) What's with Archer letting AotW roam the ship at will again? Didn't he learn anything from Hellena Handjob?


I did like:

"Go ahead and try to blow yourselves up. I'll wait."
"An extra helping of snow beetles for you tonight." and everything else Phlox said.
T'Pol getting her snark on and CQ changing the subject. Hee.

The space battle shots are getting better. I like the fact that they're treating space as 3-dimensional with the ship rolling 360 degrees. TNG and VOY used to bug the hell out of me because it was always front or rear. I would think enemy strategy would be to attack from all sides, and defensive strategy would be to roll the ship so that the weaker sheilds/armor took less of a pounding.

I enjoyed this episode, apart from the heavyhandedness of the Message. It was a worthy update of LTBYLB, replacing RaceWar! with Crusade/Jihad! A few responses to the thoughts of other posters:

First, I don't see any necessary conflict between religious fundamentalism and technological advancement. There is no reason to assume that the zealots were anti-technology per se. True, they rejected invasive medical treatment (maybe - this could have been a ruse) but they seemed to have better ship sensors than the Enterprise. They could be equally advanced in computer technology, making it possible to break whatever encryption/safeguards were in place around the Expanse databanks. The Prenom only says that they are better at prayer than space travel. A person can be both a PhD in genetics and a strict Creationist.

Secondly, the 9 days/10 days schism may seem trivial or silly to us, but I can see how it could be deadly serious to these people. For historical examples, see transubstantiation vs. consubstantiation, candles vs. oil lamps in church, appropriate language of the Mass, prayer toward Jerusalem vs. Mecca, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, etc.

Thirdly, the one thing that really annoyed me during this episode was that, once again, in the midst of the enemy a sympathetic character can be found and turned to our cause within a few minutes. At the end of Raijin, Helena Hand Job was well-disposed toward humans. That sloth guy from Shipment came over to our side. And now even a religious zealot can be suborned by Archer's lousy arguments within 90 seconds. I miss a good old intractable enemy.

Lastly, I know that we're all disappointed with T'Pol's lack of 'Vulcan strength', but what evidence do we have to suggest that Vulcan women are unusually strong? I recall that McCoy commented on Spock's strength, but are there any other canonical references? I skipped most of VOY and DS9 so I must rely on the memory of others. Bear in mind unless there is a reference specifically to Vulcan females, it's possible for T'Pol to be of 'average' strength.

I've been pondering the complaint about letting the aliens roam around the vital areas of the ship (yet again), and the more I think about it, the more I don't remember it happening that way. I grant you, I'll have to watch the tape tonight to double check, but here's what I recall:

1) Aliens/bombs get themselves on board and manage to evade medical scans which would have blown [sorry] their cover. (At this point, even if they'd been confined to guest quarters, the aliens still would have taken the ship.) Archer has ordered security protocols, which means they're escorted everywhere and only allowed into non-critical areas.
2) Aliens manage to position themselves all around the ship in non-critical areas. Like corridors and the mess hall (which also happens to be heavily populated, hey presto: hostages). They let their leader know.
3) Leader is on the bridge and threatens the Captain. Zealot demonstrates the threat and blows himself up in a corridor -- managing to cause critical damage from a non-critical area.
4) Captain realizes that until all those individual bombs are neutralized, the aliens have the crew by the short hairs. Captain also realizes that the best thing is to humor the nutcase and wait for his moment. And now the aliens have all those handy hostages to escort them finally into the actual critical areas. (I'm guessing Trip was freaking because Archer himself led them into Engineering. Again, guessing.)

Why yes, I have had emergency ops training -- how did you guess?

Head!Zealot said he had two of his men next to the warp engine, IIRC, and I remember a couple of them being on the bridge as well.

[groan], dc3. But only because you got there first.

Regent total agreement on the Vulcan wrasslin'. She was in the perfect position for the pinch and goes for that instead? Sheesh.



And how did Archer know what had happened to the planet? The heretics didn't stick around to give a news bulletin. And it doesn't really make sense to think they phoned ahead, because if I was living in a decimated, post-holy-war planet, I sure wouldn't be sharing that info with any random alien who asked.

There was a space of time they could have talked. And the other guys seemed more reasonable.


But we can assume most of the others were pretty intractable. And these two had special circumstances.

As to your points, Regent:

1) I don't think Archer ever called it a "transporter." And he could also wank that they used it for multiple purposes.

2) Site-to-site transport involves taking a person from one place and putting him in another. That's dangerous. Ultra-safe is one pad to another. Here, it was pad-to-site, which is standard. Not in Archer's time, but it's done.

3) When someone's hanging on to you, you throw yourself around.

4) As to T'Pol's fight, it was a cramped spot, there were multiple guys with guns (remember how well Indiana Jones did against the guy with the sword- bang!), and it may have been a show anyway. And I'm pretty sure I saw her going for the pinch.

5) The major cities were destroyed, and the other ships may have been off planet longer.

It would have been interesting if the crewmember killed had been Cutler. They probably couldn't do that, though.

Can someone explain the "petite" joke?