Underrated Trek:Impulse (ENT)

Welcome back to Underrated Trek, where I take a special look at Star Trek episodes that I love…which may not be the most popular or even liked by most. Today we continue our special Halloween look at scary Trek. So we’ve had Jack the Ripper, nightmares, a horror movie and ghost stories. What could be left? How does Vulcan Zombies sound?! This is….

 

Enterprise had very few scary episodes from what I could see. So it made sense to discuss the one episode that is sort of infamous for what they do. I didn’t remember this episode very much so I was interested in seeing just how good it is. Let’s take a look:

Plot Summary:

We open with Archer dragging a screaming T’Pol into sick-bay, as she tries to kill him! A day earlier, The Enterprise has stopped to help a Vulcan ship in distress. A ship had been sent in ahead but the crew attacked each other and the ship destroyed.

On the Vulcan ship the away team is attacked by zombie Vulcans. Soon T’Pol begins to show similar symptom of the madness. Turns out the ore the Vulcans had harvested is toxic, and now T’Poll is infected. Archerer and the away team fight there way to Engineering to find a way back to their shuttle. T’Pol then begins accusing of Archer of wanting to kill all the Vulcans, acting out with paranoid rage.

The other shuttle manages to retrieve the ore from the asteroid field and help the others escape the Vulcan ship before it is destroyed. T’Pol has recovered but while she is not under the influence of the druf anymore she is still not completely cured.

Guest Stars:
None really

Episode Pro’s:

That teaser may be one of the best ever (certainly the shortest ever), with the tension and the site of T’Pol flipping out. Jolene Balok is pretty damn awesome in the episode as she slowly loses her grip and becomes a paranoid loon. Truly she was the best thing in this series.To bad she had to be treated the way she was by the series.

The scenes on the Vulcan ship are the memorable one’s, they seem to be even going for a haunted house feel with the mood lighting. The Vulcan Zombies are scary especially when there are so  many of them. The episode almost feels like Aliens except it’s Zombie Vulcan’s. And no, the word Zombie is never used for some reason. The episode is reminiscent of “Empok Nor”, but we knew Garak so the tension was higher here the Vulcan zombies have no characters (despite one scene that tries to give one to one of of them). But unlike on DS9 no one dies in the episode, even the red shirt crewman, which is a point in Enterprise’s favor.

And I like that what happens in this episode isn’t forgotten, T’Pol has side effects fro the rest of the season.

Episode Con’s

Gotta love the pointless CGI in the episode, like the asteroids they fly through. Trek isn’t about the effects it just seems out of place

The A story is awesome and scary but the B story about Travis and Tripp trying to harvest ore from the asteroids is the height of boredom. We know they’re going to eventually rescue the others so just get on with it. Especially when they have to forcefully extend it to keep the two busy. And pulling away from the main action hurts it, they should have learned from DS9 how to keep focus.

On DS9 Garak showed real sorry for his actions at the end. Can’t quite say the same for T’Pol. Yeah I know she’s Vulcan but a simple apology for attacking her captain would have been nice.And why in the world did the Vulcan ship not realize the asteroid field was full of a substance harmful to them?? They didn’t analyze the stuff before harvesting and LINING THEIR SHIP WITH IT!!! It took Phlox a whole two minutes to figure it out.

But for me, I have seen this episode before but barely remembered it And I guess that’s Enterprise in a nutshell, even when they manage a decent episode it still isn’t strong enough to make an impression likle the previous Trek’s could.

Fast Foward Moment:

So after we get the scene where T’Pol and Archer talk after she has recovered, that should be the end of the episode. Right? No instead we see movie night, only to find out it wasn’t movie night after all. We get not one but to fake outs of T’Pol thinking she is being attacked again only to finally wake up in Sick-Bay. I guess you can argue it’s to show T’pol is still not herself but it feels like filler and according to IMDB, that’s exactly what it was.

Final Thoughts:What can I say, it’s a damn good episode for Enterprise

So my friends we see that while Trek may not be the first choice for a good scar en Halloween, there are plenty of episode which rise up to the challenge of creeping us the hell out!