Title :
Countdown
Series :
Rating :
Overall Ep :
75
First Aired :
19 May 2004
Stardate :
Unknown
Director :
Year :
Writers :
Season Ep :
YATI :
Archer takes the injured and possibly brain damaged Hoshi along for her knowledge of the weapon systems and codes. Huh? Why doesn't he just ask the Xindi for the information he needs? They built the thing!
Body Count :
Lots of ships destroyed; dozens, maybe hundreds of casualties are likely. Major Hayes is killed rescuing Hoshi.
Plotline
Archer and the Xindi council launch an attack on the stolen weapon, hoping to destroy it before the brainwashed Hoshi can break the codes needed to arm it. Meanwhile T'Pol and Trip devise a plan to destroy one of the spheres, hoping it will disrupt the entire network. Faced with defeat, the sphere builders decided to take direct action.
Analysis
I'm beginning to dislike the way the Reptilians are being portrayed. So far they have been shown as being aggressive, violent, and single-minded. As far as they are concerned Humans are guilty, the evidence says so and that's that. But in the last episode or two, we have the Reptilians confronted by so much evidence that we either have to believe that they are also incredibly stupid to keep thinking that Earth is their enemy, or they actually don't care.
In this episode the Reptilian Commander is faced with direct, irrefutable evidence that the trans-dimensional aliens really are in control of the spheres - evidence that even convinces the Insectoids they are on the wrong side. Yet he doesn't even question what he is doing, he simply attacks the Insectoids and carries on regardless, threatening death to his own crew if they even question the aliens.
We have seen plenty of 'evil' species before on Enterprise, so there is nothing really wrong or impossible about the Reptilian attitude, but I found the Xindi much more interesting when they were misguided people who genuinely believed they were doing a horrible thing because it was an awful necessity. Now it looks like the Reptilian is trying to destroy Earth basically for kicks, or just because he's been told to do it by the people who he must know, deep down inside, are actually responsible for the destruction of his species. It makes them a lot less interesting.
