Enterprise: Desert Crossing

[FakeGeekGirl]

http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/e124.php

Okay, I have been waiting a week for this to be on the site just so I could roast my fellow Floridians.

I grew up in West Texas which is very arid and gets very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. I moved to Florida to go to grad school and ended up staying here to work. The weather in Florida is beautiful - and very constant. In what passes for winter in this state it may freeze overnight one or two nights, but it also never gets particularly hot either (it just feels hot because of the humidity). For instance, right now, in freaking November, it is currently eighty-three degrees outside where I am in North Florida (where Trip is supposed to be from). In July, it might get up to the low nineties (which in this humidity is no joke, but you'll notice it's not much higher than it is now). And it is always, always, always, always humid. The problem with having such narrow ranges of temperature and humidity virtually year round is that people become delicate flowers who lose their cold, heat, aridity, and everything else tolerance. It's happening to me and I've only lived here four years - I am miserably cold and dry when I go see my parents for Christmas. Gets into the high eighties? Omg it's so hot, I'm melting. It's sixty degrees outside in the morning? Break out the parkas! It's only seventy percent relative humidity instead of ninety percent? OMG it's so dry my lips are cracked pass the chapstick!

So basically, I am not surprised that Trip completely wilts in the desert and becomes the load for the entire trip.

[GandALF]

So he notices the guy he who played Davik, but ignores the fact that Clancy Brown played Savage Opress, thereby missing the opportunity to make an "Archer is a separatist sympathiser" joke. What is the world coming too.

[bronnt]

This is more of the typical approach of Enterprise and how they failed at storyteling. There's a lot of instances for "Show, don't Tell," and they completely ignore them. You could have your main characters demonstrate smart desert survival training-for instance, having them carry more than one water bottle, cover their heads, and travel by day-for-night. Instead, they TELL us that these two underwent desert survival training, so we have to assume that what looks like bumbling incompetence really is not.

You COULD show Zobral in an environment where he demonstrates that he's not a bad guy-showing him helping people, visiting a hospital, visiting a school he's built. Instead they TELL us that he's a decent guy and show us a game of desert lacrosse.

These are missed opportunities. If you let the audience put the pieces together, the show gains a lot more depth. This is why it (usually) works when Jean-Luc Picard has something to say at the end of an episode, and does not for Jonathan Archer.

[AlucardNoir]

Yeah, the Florida stuff bothered me. As did the whole "why not T'Pol" line of thinking. They were technically going on a courtesy visit, maybe even a diplomatic one, T'Pol in season one was still the representative of another government. If they were going to war in a desert environment, sure, bring the woman who spent her formative years in a desert, but for this? It would be like some army general that was working with UN observers inviting the UN observers that are there to see he isn't breaking any international conventions on human rights and illegal weapons to his college reunion. (and I'm intentionally comparing Archer with the military representative of a third world nation that needs UN supervision not to torture their people, to start death camps or use poison gas on their enemies because he's Archer)

All that being said, anyone here actually play polo or know what the rules are? That "desert lacrosse" didn't remind me of any sort of polo I've ever seen - then again I've seen as much lacrosse as I've seen polo, namely only portrayals of the games in other medias so I might be utterly wrong but while it did look like Lacrosse, then again, all images of polo I've ever seen either involve horses and mallets or people in a swimming pool.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think as bad as Desert Crossing is in some respects, it is probably the ONLY Prime Directive episode which makes a god damn lick of sense.

[BlackoutCreature2]

So he notices the guy he who played Davik, but ignores the fact that Clancy Brown played Savage Opress, thereby missing the opportunity to make an "Archer is a separatist sympathiser" joke. What is the world coming too.

I'm upset he didn't make a single Lex Luthor joke. I would think they'd write themselves, but maybe they're more fitting if this was with evil Janeway instead of stupid Archer.

[Madner Kami]

Something not mentioned in the review, but why exactly does Archer think it's a good or even legally alright thing to land on a planet that is clearly inhabited by an advanced civilization? I mean they must've seen or scanned the cities outside the desert, noticed the satellite network and quite likely even got hold of the civilization's communication activities and it never even strikes anyone to make contact with these people and ask them for permission to stroll into their territory?

[Robovski]

Something not mentioned in the review, but why exactly does Archer think it's a good or even legally alright thing to land on a planet that is clearly inhabited by an advanced civilization? I mean they must've seen or scanned the cities outside the desert, noticed the satellite network and quite likely even got hold of the civilization's communication activities and it never even strikes anyone to make contact with these people and ask them for permission to stroll into their territory?

Well, he was invited by a fellow spacefarer. In this case at least.

[Kilo]

"he's always the bad guy"

You take back that slander against the esteemed Mr. Eugene Harold Krabs right now, Chuck

Yeah, the Florida stuff bothered me. As did the whole "why not T'Pol" line of thinking.

Same. Anecdotal, I know, but my mother was born and raised in the Mexican desert, spent most of her 20s in places where it was over 100 fahrenheit in the shade.

Although if you looked at her now, you genuinely wouldn't be able to tell at all. Hell, she actively refuses to visit her family down south during the summer and insist we only visit in the winter.

[Admiral X]

You could have your main characters demonstrate smart desert survival training-for instance, having them carry more than one water bottle, cover their heads, and travel by day-for-night. Instead, they TELL us that these two underwent desert survival training, so we have to assume that what looks like bumbling incompetence really is not.

I think a big part of that is that the writers really had no knowledge of the things they were writing about, and worse yet made no real effort to change that, perhaps because they mistakenly believed that they actually did have some knowledge, or at least enough knowledge. This is somewhat demonstrated by what Chuck pointed out about first aid for heat exhaustion. Now, the internet was a different place back in 2001, but there was still plenty of information out there on things like basic first aid, or, you could, you know, go to a library and look up some information on it. Or there's just the way they seemed to never really understand what leadership meant or looked like, as exemplified by Tuvok's line about how the captain was always right. Or just how out of touch the presentation of Archer was while everyone was going on about how awesome he was while everything he actually did indicated otherwise. I think this attitude and general lack of knowledge is honestly one of the main reasons Trek started sucking more and more as time went on, along with taking the audience for granted.

You COULD show Zobral in an environment where he demonstrates that he's not a bad guy-showing him helping people, visiting a hospital, visiting a school he's built. Instead they TELL us that he's a decent guy and show us a game of desert lacrosse.

That's a bit trickier because of budgetary reasons. The more sets they build, the more actors they have, the more CGI they make, the more it costs for that episode. I'm actually a bit surprised they made special desert uniforms, though to be fair they ended up using them in a few other episodes later. Still, I kind of got the impression that this was a throwaway episode and that there wasn't much enthusiasm in making it. I know that you could probably say the same thing about the majority of VOY and ENT, but I especially got that feeling from episodes like this.