Sunday, September 1, 2013

Terra Prime

***** (5 stars out of 5)
John Paxton, voted best-dressed Bond Villain of 2155, patrols the streets of Old Detroit keeping humanity safe from adorable pointy-eared half-alien rugrats. Plus he's got a mobile moon base with laser sharks!

Seemingly following up on rumours that Humans and Vulcans have started to bump uglies, Paxton managed to keep his lunch down and had his Earth First (Sorry, Babylon 5, I meant Terra Prime) stooges steal Trip and T'Pol's... uh... personal Starfleet Seed Samples. The crazy racists whip up a test-tube baby they believe will make their closed-minded buddies toss their cookies. Toss their cookies with RAGE! If the aliens don't quit their fruit picking, hover-cab driving, and medical professional jobs at once and leave the solar system FOREVER, Paxton will blow up Starfleet HQ. As you do.

It's up to our heroes to swoop down to Mars on a terraforming comet, bringing along enough phasers and sick bags to stop Paxton tying T'Pol to the monorail tracks until she pays the rent.

Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint, the fantastic leads from the Alien Nation TV series, finally appear again in the same episode. But they've swapped roles as "Prejudiced Human Cop" and "Brainy Alien". Still, as T'Pol points out: "Life is change."

There's nothing like the death of a sick little kid to suck the wind out of your sails in a story's final moments. The second Elizabeth in Trip's life passes on. But grief is easier when shared. T'Pol is as moved in her own way as Trip by the tragedy of a life that was too brief. That moment is very painful. And I'm proud of them for having it.

Phlox tells Archer that his time on Enterprise was kind of meant as a break from his giant crazy family. But he found another family with them.

"A final frontier begins..." says Archer to the sceptical alien delegates. "Let's explore it together."

"Terra Prime" was, by default, Enterprise's TRUE finale. (There's one more to go, but it turned out to be a Star Trek finale overall instead.) Hmm. A giant laser beam firing into the San Francisco bay? Looks pretty cool. Let's make sure we use THAT again someday...

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