Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

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Grade "Impulse"

10
0
No votes
9
2
14%
8
2
14%
7
2
14%
6
5
36%
5
0
No votes
4
1
7%
3
2
14%
2
0
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1
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Total votes: 14

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Kevin Thomas Riley
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Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Sun May 13, 2007 4:16 am

Darkness falls across the land... and the time has come to review and grade the season three episode Impulse.

Don't forget to give your grade as well, with 10 being excellent, 5 average and 1 awful.

My review is also viewable at my website.

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3-05 Impulse

Reviewed by Kevin Thomas Riley


So, we have arrived at the attack of the mutant killer Vulcan zombies, also known as Impulse. As a matter of fact, despite the premise, I quite enjoyed the episode. Sure you can roll your eyes at the very sight of the living dead Vulcans, who look like they're straight out of a Michael Jackson video, but I think that Impulse managed to stay on the right side from being camp. The editing and directing kept it suspenseful and scary enough. Maybe the darkened sets and strobe lights helped to get the right "feel". Also, the acting was top notch, especially from Jolene Blalock as T'Pol struggled with her gradual decent into paranoia and madness.

One can of course argue that a substance that strips away Vulcans emotional control shouldn't make them like zombies, but more like their more aggressive cousins the Romulans. That might in itself have made for an interesting story. However, I find it plausible enough. We don't know how they behaved prior to becoming zombies. Maybe they were more Romulan-like before the Trellium-induced madness took over completely. We should also remember that Romulans manage to keep themselves from killing each other by a rigid dictatorship that focuses their aggressiveness in the service of their Empire. Romulans have had hundreds of years to learn how to tame their violent tendencies. The poor Vulcans on the Seleya haven't. I can also buy that their skin starts to rot. That could be a physical side-effect of the Trellium-D exposure.

The story is straight forward enough. Lots of action as Archer, T'Pol, Reed and a MACO sergeant called Hawkins must escape from the Vulcan zombies while on the derelict Vulcan ship the Seleya (where T'Pol previously has served onboard). There really isn't more than that besides a subplot where Trip and Travis try to harvest some Trellium rocks from an odd asteroid field. The most compelling thing in Impulse was to watch T'Pol as she tries to fight the effects of the Trellium. You could really feel how hard she tries to remain in control, but ultimately she fails. While necessary for the story I had problems with Archer again becoming the figure that a weakened T'Pol has to lean on to manage through. Sigh! That has been used all too much on Enterprise.

While indeed interesting to watch, the problem is that we again see T'Pol forced into displaying emotions. We've seen it before (in Fusion, The Seventh and in Bounty for instance) and we'll see it again. I don't mind T'Pol as a character with emotions closer to the surface than other Vulcans (all Vulcans aren't cut from the same cloth) but why constantly force it on her? Why not let her experience and discover it herself in a more natural fashion? Why did the writers and producers feel it necessary to create artificial means, whether they were mind-rapes, pa'nar syndrome or Trellium-D, for her?

And of course the Trellium-D thing will unfortunately turn out to be a big part in her season three character arc, but that's for a later review. Suffice to say that they had a possibility to show how T'Pol struggled to restore her emotional balance after the exposure on the Seleya. That could've tied into her helping Trip to restore his mental balance while grieving his dead sister. Alas, they went into a different route.

But isolated in Impulse, the Trellium-D story turned out as a nice twist. It wasn't the spatial anomalies that made the Vulcans crazy - as was suspected from the recordings (The Expanse) made on the Vaankara, the Vulcan ship that is now revealed to have travelled into the Expanse to find the Seleya. It turns out that the Trellium-D normally used to insulate vessels from the effects of the anomalies, is a potent neuro-toxin on Vulcans, destroying their neural pathways.

After this discovery they can't use it to insulate the Enterprise. Well, they can, but that would kill T'Pol, so they don't. She offers to get left behind but Archer declines the offer, saying "I can't try to save humanity without holding on to what makes me human." That's nice of him but it flies in the face of the Airlock Archer we've seen before and will see again. One might argue that it wouldn't be good for morale if a Captain just left crewmembers behind like that. But on the other hand one can picture resentment towards T'Pol building up as they encounter more destructive anomalies ahead. However, that wasn't something they delved further into as the episodes progressed. In fact, most of the time they managed to avoid a lot of the anomalies anyway.

The scenes with Trip and Travis mining rocks were nice and the visuals of the asteroid field were awesome - perhaps an unintended homage to The Emprise Strikes Back. But, like in that movie, the behaviour of the asteroids really defied the laws of physics. There's no way that they'd tumble around like that in such close proximity to each other. Gravitational forces would see to that. At least it was "explained" by T'Pol here that their erratic movements could be caused by the anomalies. Wonder if that also explains why Trip and Travis could walk on them, despite the extremely low gravity?

It also made no sense for them to leave the Enterprise while the Captain, the Executive Officer and the head of Security were already away on a boarding party. That meant that the entire command crew was away. Who was in command of the Enterprise? Ensign Hoshi Sato? And since there is an entire contingent of MACOs onboard, why didn't they send them to the Seleya instead of just the lonely sergeant Hawkins? And of course Super Archer had to shine as well, by constantly taking up the front or the rear. From a military standpoint, those positions should be filled by Hawkins and Reed since their trained for it and it's their damn job to protect their superiors.

If T'Pol's nightmare at the end of the episode seems tacked on it's because it is. The tight directing of the episode resulted in them having some minutes to spare so they had to find something to fill them with, hence the nightmare. I kind of liked it, especially the first part before the zombies came back. That movie night sequence was hilarious (T'Pol's line "Then use logic more quietly" and the face Trip gives), and one has to wonder how and why T'Pol's mind conjured up that?

I also really liked the beginning when Trip more or less asked T'Pol on a date, and how she has no problem to pick up on the fact that movie night is on again. Excellent chemistry and a very cute semi-teasing moment between them. Love the looks they give each other in that scene. Wonder if Archer picked up any of it or if he was oblivious due to being in angry weight-of-the-world-on-his-shoulders mode?

The MACO sergeant, Hawkins, also had a nice moment with T'Pol when he tried to help her out on the Seleya, giving her water and talking to her. I couldn't help but to think that T'Pol's comment to him about "a common misconception" regarding Vulcans' apparent lack of emotions was directed at some fans who don't like it when Vulcans exhibit emotions. But T'Pol made it quite clear that they do have them, they just suppress and control them.

All in all, I give Impulse a grade of 7 on my 10-graded scale. It was a somewhat scary and enjoyable episode even with some faults. It also benefits from being a season three episode and part of the Expanse arc.

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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby Dinah » Mon May 14, 2007 2:17 am

I really wanted to like this episode more than I do. Two things bothered me: Archer once again had to save poor T'Pol and the effect of the trellium on the Selaya's crew. T'Pol went bonkers when exposed to the trellium, but the other Vulcans reminded me more of zombies. It was too bad they killed off Hawkins; he was the only Maaco -- besides Hayes -- who recevied any development whatsoever. I gave the episode a 6. T'Pol does like to dream about Trip.

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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby Reanok » Mon May 14, 2007 3:08 am

I voted 6 I liked this episode and the we get to see what happened to the Vulcans on the Seleya and learn a little bit about T'Pol's past that she a science officer and that she knew Solin the chief engineer. The conversation between T'Pol and Hawkins about the violence of Vulcans in the past and their homocidal rage was a nice scene. I felt sorry for T'Pol as she slowly lost her emotional control and that Archer, Malcolm and the Macos fought off the Vulcan zombies.I liked that she dreames about Trip.

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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby panyasan » Mon May 14, 2007 6:49 am

Finally having some time to write.. Smile Reading these reviews about season 3 make me remember how much i liked season 3 and how much trouble we went through to actually see it (like installing a satelite dish twice because of the snowy wheather). The acting of TPol was nicely done and i liked the scene with Hawkins where she explains the history of Vulcans and their emotions, because it give some insight how TPol really is and thinks. (She mostly keeps that to her self). (TPol is by the way almost the only one that encourgages other crewmembers, like we saw in Borderland).
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby CX » Mon May 14, 2007 9:31 pm

2x05 – “Impulse”
attack of the Vulcan zombies

In some ways this episode was …interesting enough, but in most I found it to simply be an “attack of the Vulcan zombies!” movie that actually reminded me a lot of the Resident Evil movies in a lot of stylistic ways (strobes especially adding to that), which really isn’t a very good thing.

Actually, this episode started off with something of an annoyance of mine, which is to start at a dramatic point in the episode in an attempt to confuse the audience, then going back to some point in the past to explain everything. My, T’Pol sure is a screamer though. Twisted Evil Anyway, the technique I mentioned was actually taught to me in high school (can’t remember what year), but keep in mind that the textbooks we went out of were rather outdated, as is this style of writing, which for me at least has been done so many times just in Star Trek that it has lost any dramatic effect and is simply an annoyance now. Having viewed the episodes up to Similitude, I can vouch for the fact that this seems to be another annoying staple of this season unfortunately.

Anyway, after failing horribly at producing viable “Trellium-D” with which to insulate the Enterprise’s hull, our crew comes across an asteroid field full of the natural ore while responding to a distress call from a Vulcan ship that somehow got sucked into the expanse some 9 months prior. This gives us our two plot-lines, with Archer, T’Pol, Reed, and a MACO taking one shuttlepod on a recon. and rescue mission to the Vulcan ship, and with Trip and Travis to have some fun retrieving Trell-D ore.

The mission to the Vulcan ship quickly turns awry when they finally come across their first Vulcan, who turns out to be in some kind of irrational emotional state, and tried to kill Archer. Everything from the makeup and appearance to the way this and the other members of the Vulcan crew acted screamed “Zombie!” to me, and this episode has forever remained the “Vulcan zombie” episode to me since I first saw bits and pieces of it when it originally aired (channel surfing Wink ) Anyway, as is the zombie flick cliché, as soon as you shoot one of them, the rest of them come swarming, and our would-be rescuers find themselves shooting the hell out of the Vulcans they’ve come to help, and as it turns out, stun doesn’t last for very long on the zombiefied Vulans. For the lameness of the plot, we actually get some good drama in that, for once, the member of the crew that’s usually the only one immune to whatever disaster happens, is now the only one affected while the humans remain immune. We even got an early indication of its effect on her when she snapped at the MACO for setting his weapon to kill, and later we see her horror as the thought occurs to her that she’ll end up just like her former colleagues.

As an aside, I have to wonder that given their experience up until now, why did they even bother trying talking to the zombies blocking their path to their shuttlepod? WTF

As T’Pol continues to fall apart, Super!Archer is there to hold her together, all while outsmarting and somehow out-muscling Vulcans who now have no inhibitions preventing them from using their superior strength on the foolish humans that have boarded their ship. Later, as T’Pol has pretty much completely lost it, Archer is once again able to overpower her when she should be at her strongest, even though he does end up stunning her so they can get over the clichéd bottomless pit, which might have been caused by a meteor impact, except that then that section of the ship would have been depressurized.

Meanwhile, back on Enterprise, Trip and Travis are having some fun beaming small asteroids aboard, until a malfunction breaks one of them up and materializes it within the structure of the transporter itself, pretty much putting it out of commission. Heh, Trip’s comment on this being something new for the maintenance crew really wanted me to smile and say, “you’re an asshole.” Very Happy I guess that’s just because I used to be a maintenance guy though. Wink Anyway, they end up having to take the other shuttlepod out to one of the bigger asteroids so they can gather space rocks the old fashioned way. Just in time for them to finish, another anomaly comes along and changes the course of the big rocks they’re out there floating on, and they have to get out in a hurry or they’ll be squashed like bugs. Unfortunately, they don’t get away unscathed, and this puts the shuttlepod out of commission just when Archer and co. can really use another way out.

As it turns out, Archer and co. are able to make it back to their shuttlepod, though they have to destroy the ship in the process. Conveniently, the Vulcan crew is too far gone to make this weigh too heavily on anyone other than a freaked out T’Pol, who’s now convinced her shipmates are out to kill her as well. So, once again, they are conveniently able to rescue their crewmember but not the others, justifying their deaths apparently. Rolling Eyes

Trip comes to the rescue, just in the nick of time, but only because Archer can’t break the docking collar like they did before on Shockwave, part I”. Of course once they get back to the ship, this is the point we were introduced to the episode, with T’Pol freaking in sickbay as she is restrained and doped so they can get her into the scanner. Later on we get to see her shirtless for no apparent reason, other than to see her shirtless again, both in her dream, and when she actually wakes up to Archer at the end of the episode. :rolleyesrequest:

Actually, I kinda liked the scene at the movie, which Trip had oh so persistently invited her to at the beginning of the episode. She got a nice zing in to Trip, and the expression on his face was priceless. Unfortunately it turned out to be all a dream…

I can’t get too worked up one way or the other about this episode, which to me was just another “meh” episode. 4 Vulcan zombies out of 10.
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby blacknblue » Tue May 15, 2007 1:18 am

One thing stuck in my mind in this episode. It was really endemic throughout ENT, but in this episode it stuck out like a sore thumb. The entire crew was entirely too blase about the danger they were in. They were ALWAYS blase about the danger they were in. No matter whether it was hostile aliens, or space anomalies, or a warp drive about to blow, none of them ever showed the slightest sign of TAKING BASIC PRECAUTIONS!

This drove me crazy at the time, and it still drives me crazy when I think about it. Maybe because I am paranoid. Or maybe, just maybe, because I grew up blue collar around people who actually DO work at dangerous jobs. My family has been farmers, miners, loggers, and construction workers since the beginning of time. Danger is not just an imaginary dramatic plot device folks, it really CAN happen to you. I don't want to think about the number of family and neighbors that I could name who have been killed or maimed on the job. And these people were being CAREFUL. They were dedicated professionals who knew the risks they were taking, who took the proper precautions, and still got nailed.

No matter how how careful you are, sometimes the edge of the higwall will crumble under your dozer tracks. Sometimes the tree will split just before it is ready to topple and the butt will kick back and hit you Sometimes, no matter how carefully you watch, you will slip on a patch of mud and your sleeve will get caught in the harvester and there goes your arm. It is a dangerous universe and anyone who actually works in dangerous occupations learns this early and often. There is a bridge under construction in my town right now that is behind schedule. In an effort to hurry up and get it done, the contractor has already killed several workers and OSHA is about to put them out of business.

But nobody on ENT ever seems to take the time to THINK THINGS THROUGH. Argh! This drives me crazy! They had the Captain, First Officer, Armory Officer and a MACO away on a ship that they KNEW was loaded with insane Vulcans and further knew that they might need emergency help at any moment. The transporter was knocked out of commission and what do they do? Why naturally, they take the only remaining method of getting help to their stranded officers and go for a joyride, managing to disable it in the process.

I wanted to grab the nearest blunt object and beat Trip firmly and frequently about the head and neck until he got the message. This kind of thing, more than anything else, destroys the willing suspension of disbelief for me. It shows how utterly clueless the Holloywood writers are when it comes to real life.

I give it a 3.
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Tue May 15, 2007 2:14 am

Hmm, people at Brunette Jolene seemed to like this episode more... Confused
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby Linda » Tue May 15, 2007 2:22 pm

Well, I gave this one a 6. The concept that there are situations where Humans are immune to things that Vulcans are vulnerable too is interesting. It gives strength to the federating idea where people can cover for each other's weaknesses.

I don't know where fans got the idea that Vulcans are not emotional. I thought it was always clear that they had to use psychological techniques to control an emotional nature which was actually more volitile than Human nature. Hence the term 'Vulcan' for the name of their species. There are articles in fanzines by the producers and writers about this. And right from TOS episodes like Amok Time it shows this underlying nature. "This is the Vulcan heart, this is the Vulcan soul" and all that.
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby snapper » Tue May 15, 2007 8:30 pm

Well I liked this episode KTR! Your excellent review flagged up its many weaknesses, but for an entertaining epi I gave it an 8. It was well directed, had memorable SFX, and JB's fall into paranoia was beautifully done. I loved the TnT gem of a scene at the beginning, including Trip persuading Archer that movie night was actully needed for the morale of the crew. And the dream sequence at the end, time filler or not, was nicely done.
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby Kevin Thomas Riley » Tue May 15, 2007 10:10 pm

snapper wrote:Well I liked this episode KTR! Your excellent review flagged up its many weaknesses...

Why, thank you! Embarassed Smile *blushes*
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby Rigil Kent » Wed May 16, 2007 5:36 pm

Reposting my "review" from WWBJ.

Gave it a 6. It was slightly above average although there were a lot of things in this episode that I hated (i.e. everyone manhandling T'Pol; Weak!T'Pol ... again; some of the absolute stupidity of their SOP here ... let's see: the CO, XO, TAC and a MACO board a ship ... exactly why do the CO & XO go off together instead of it being CO/TAC & XO/MACO? Oh, right. It's ENT logic; the absurdity of T'Pol basically being naked under the sheet. Sigh.)

Aside from Singularity (where Archer was needed), is there ever an instance on ENT where T'Pol (and only T'Pol) is the Big!Damned!Hero? As I've been watching some of the repeats on SciFi, I'm getting more and more annoyed that she is constantly turned into the Damsel in Distress so Captain!Asshat can charge to the rescue. How anyone can say that she is written as a "strong" character eludes me. Is it too damned much to ask for her to be the hero for once? Evil or Very Mad

Evidently so. Rolling Eyes
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby CoffeeCat » Wed May 16, 2007 5:49 pm

Rigil Kent wrote:the absurdity of T'Pol basically being naked under the sheet. Sigh.)


Another character assassination on Dr. Phlox?
I hate it when they do stuff like this. I feel bad for all those Phlox fans who were comfortable thinking the quirky Denobulan wasn't a pervert. Now all us fan fiction writers who want to stick to the characters as they are written on screen must take even this crap into account.
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby Rigil Kent » Wed May 16, 2007 6:03 pm

To me, it just felt like another one of those gratuitous shots of Jolene mostly naked intended to appeal to the people that the idiots-in-charge thought were watching. She might as well have just worn a damned bikini while on duty for all that the execs kept stripping her of her clothes (and dignity). Rolling Eyes

So I couldn't really blame Phlox for it. On one hand, there is a logical explanation: Her clothes were covered with trellium, so they needed to be destroyed. The problem is she wouldn't be laying there naked. She'd have been dressed in those hospital PJs. But then, we could show her bare back and hint at her nakedness. Rolling Eyes
Last edited by Rigil Kent on Wed May 16, 2007 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby CoffeeCat » Wed May 16, 2007 6:16 pm

^You're right. It did feel like that's what they were doing.

You're too nice about it, however.

I like to take every nasty little detail into account because I like to be spiteful towards the @$$holes who decided it was acceptable in the first place. I would write Phlox as a perv. because it would be my way of making the the creative minds behind that stunt lie in the bed they've made. It's my way of saying flipping them the bird.
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Re: Review and grade episode 3-05 "Impulse"

Postby Rigil Kent » Wed May 16, 2007 6:40 pm

Well, I generally like Phlox (except in A Night in Sickbay or Twilight but there's so much wrong with those episodes that it's hard for me to like anyone in them) so I don't see him as a perv. He's an alien, though, so his principles/morals are obviously different than human ones.
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