Civilization, Prod#ST:ENT 109
Synopsis: The crew disguise themselves as aliens when they visit an Earth-like planet.
MJC Review:
The Drama -
There was definitely some mystery in this episode, but where's the adventure??? And the
so-called action was mediocre. This show was not quite what I had expected. I thought that
there would be some really good sci-fi drama as the earth crew deals with (for the first
time?) a pre-industrialized, pre-warp civilization. Perhaps, there would even had been
some mistakes made along the way that would eventually lead to the foundation of the Prime
Directive in future episodes. But NO! Instead, we get what is almost a bad X-Files
episode. Archer uncovering an alien conspiracy on a primitive civilization? Please, if the
writers are going to do something along those lines, at least do it right! At least there
was some good acting by Bakula. Despite being a mediocre story, he played his part well.
He's about the only thing that saved this episode from and MJC god-awful rating. Plus, he
gets the good looking alien chick! I think I'll save my valuable review writing time for a
better episode.
Tid Bits -
Do the writers not like Linda Park? Apparently, she was able to get the universal
translators to adapt to this new culture with little effort. I think that there would have
been a lot of story telling room for Hoshi in a first contact episode. Has anyone noticed
that Trip seems to be on every landing party? I guess it's a 22nd century starfleet
requirement to send your chief engineer on every away mission. I wonder how far this
civilization has advanced by the time of 24th century Star Trek? Space flight yet? Weren't
the Malurians destroyed by Nomad in TOS? Speaking of Civilization, has anyone played
the new Civilization 3 game? It is definitely worth your valuable time - more so than this
episode was.
What it all means -
I'll have to get back to you on this one.
2 cool peace signs
MJC 200111.17