Star Trek Reviews

Return to season list

Star Trek Ent - Season 1 - Episode 04

Star Trek Ent - 1x04 - Strange New World

Originally Aired: 2001-10-10

Synopsis:
Crew members go on a survey mission to a seemingly uninhabited Earth-like planet where a mysterious alien presence sends them into a state of paranoid overdrive. [DVD]

My Rating - 2

Fan Rating Average - 5.05

Rate episode?

Rating: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
# Votes: 30 6 14 11 26 16 24 54 19 8 11

Problems
- Dr. Phlox talks of some "tropolysine" atoms in the pollen that were brought by the storm. Phlox says that they have an extra neutron which breaks down into a poison inside the body. This doesn't make any sense from a physics point of view though. A poison would be a complex molecular structure. Not a stray neutron or a single atom.

Factoids
- T'Pol has been to 36 Minshara class planets.
- This episode establishes that there are 82 crewmembers aboard Enterprise.

Remarkable Scenes
- Trip: "Where no dog has gone before."
- The transporter accident.
- T'Pol using the Vulcan neck pinch for the first time.

My Review
A nice premise goes sour. First we had the introduction of a few interesting minor crewmembers, of which I especially liked Elizabeth Cutler, then the peaceful exploration of a new world. The episode lacked contention, but it was far more pleasant than the previous two which were relatively dark and dreary. But night falls and the episode turns into a generic horror story quickly. The whole thing looked to me like an excuse to get the characters down on the planet acting all crazy. And it's not as if we haven't seen this cliche several times over in TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager...

The following are comments submitted by my readers.

  • From Krs321 on 2012-02-24 at 3:42pm:
    Have to give some props for the way the neck pinch was introduced. Low key.
  • From Azalea Jane on 2021-07-28 at 1:30am:
    I guessed that the characters were under a hallucinogen or shared delusion, a common enough plot in Trek. But I didn't anticipate the resolution; that was delightfully unexpected. I actually loved the little story they concocted to get Trip to back down involving T'Pol and Sato speaking Vulcan. I thought the tension was well-done, though it didn't endear me to Trip at all. And I agree, the neck pinch was a nice touch.

Prove to me that you are a real person and not a spam robot by typing in the text of this image:

Return to season list