(1x16) Poor Me, Pour Me Another One : Shuttlepod One!

[entkayjay]

This is the discussion thread for S1E16, Shuttlepod One! All Delphic Expanse rules of engagement apply.

Written by: B&B! Surprisingly!
Directed by: David Livingston
Rewatch chat is scheduled for Monday, May 9th at 8pm EST (1:00 am Tuesday, May 9th GMT).

[Honeybee]

First thing, I'm pretty sure the Shuttlepod would have gotten hot and not cold had the life support systems been turned down to low, and I'm not sure a slow leak would even be possible without blowing the whole thing up (Physics? Anyone?)

But, from a human perspective, this is an awesome episode. Malcolm the pessimist. Trip the optimist. Malcolm the intellectual. Trip pretending not to be. I say pretend because in The Cogenitor we learn he likes classical music, so he isn't a total hick - something that we see over and over again in the first season. He just acts like one some time.

Trip shows his leadership abilities, yet again. He is willing to sacrifice his own life for Malcolm's, as well.

Malcolm, being the tactical officer, doesn't have as much to do and so he wallows in his letters.

Very interesting that they both dated the same woman, of course.

And, this would be one of the few episodes that chemistry-tested a T'Pol/Malcolm romance. The dream is cute, but it's just a dream. No hint that anything could or should happen in real life.

Very interesting that Trip claims not to have noticed how attractive she is, especially considering the way the two have bantered since Broken Bow. I think he's just in denial - and that's for real, not just shipper's goggles. He has eyes, after all. I think he's probably afraid to admit the spark that the viewers could see.

One little thing. Archer always got so much heat for being a jerk, but he's always concerned for his crew welfare. He's very kind and compassionate with Malcolm at the end.

Still, very strong episode.

[Hummingbird2]

I love this episode! It's one of my all-time favorites.

One thing I would like to add is: I wish that they could've kept the deleted scene in the episode (blasted commercials!).

[EntAllat]

This episode has always been one of my favorites and it's also one of Enterprise fandom's favorite - for good reason, I think.

But it's also the one that made me stay away from traditional Star Trek fan forums once I knew I loved this show. I'd caught Enterprise in reruns and I was hungry for any kind of discussion about it, so I checked out episode reviews. I found one that was probably well read during the show's run and started reading through it, getting more and more disappointed with the reviewer's opinion. I finally got to the review of this episode and the reviewer absolutely ripped it to shreds. I was appalled! I stopped reading any reviews and just continued to enjoy the series on my own.

This ep has a lot of the things that make Enterprise such a favorite of mine. For one, the shuttlepod looks like something closer to spacecraft and aircraft of this era. It doesn't look terribly comfortable for long flights, it's small, and there's a heck of a lot of buttons and switches. I just loved looking at it! Then too, the story focuses on the people. Something went wrong with the alien ship but it's Hoshi and not T'Pol or Phlox that reveals that and in terms of everyone being shaken up but okay, sorry and grateful, etc. instead of focusing on the technical aspects of what went wrong or lots of medical jargon about injuries. Micro-singularities are mentioned but we get a moment of Captain Archer teasing his unflappable First Officer instead of a lot of technobabble about said phenomenon. In the shuttlepod we've got the ship's engineer and tactical officer, both highly trained in technology, and yet the dialog is natural when the two of them have to find the tiny leak. Again, instead of some technobabble we get ... mashed potatoes as glue! It's creative, funny, and wonderfully human.

The actors themselves were pleased to have gotten something like this in the first season and I can see why. It would have been a hell of a lot of fun to do and really fleshed out the characters of Trip and Malcolm. The characters go through everything here, from humor to fear to pathos, bravery, etc. It was just all around well done.

[Honeybee]

Here here. There's a lot of excellent, excellent stuff here - and I'm not sure how anyone could expect a more nuanced first season episode. It gave Trip and Malcolm great character moments, and the episodes B-players, including Archer, all had their own smaller moments to shine. How anyone could objectively rip it apart is beyond me - despite its minor imperfections.

It's also interesting to note that this is a bottle episode. There's no guest actors and no new/different sets. These kinds of episodes are written with budget issues in mind, but this one proves that you don't need lots of guests or fancy sets to make a great episode.

I wasn't online much during the run of the show, and I remember really liking this episode when it aired for all the reasons you've pointed out, Entallat.

[Destinye]

I've always thought Shuttlepod One was a great episode. I look at it from friendship terms, and this episode is the real basis for their friendship. It's great to see how opposites can become friends - which is very true.

[entkayjay]

But it's also the one that made me stay away from traditional Star Trek fan forums once I knew I loved this show. I'd caught Enterprise in reruns and I was hungry for any kind of discussion about it, so I checked out episode reviews. I found one that was probably well read during the show's run and started reading through it, getting more and more disappointed with the reviewer's opinion. I finally got to the review of this episode and the reviewer absolutely ripped it to shreds. I was appalled! I stopped reading any reviews and just continued to enjoy the series on my own.

This. So much this, times a million during the original run. It was very difficult at times to be an Enterprise fan when it was on the air because there was so much animosity and pure, unadulterated hatred of anything to do with it. I was so, so fortunate to find the small (by comparison) but passionate and dedicated corners of fandom that not only kept the fire alight, but launched not one but TWO successful "Save Enterprise!" campaigns. Only Paramount/UPN/CBS and huge upheavals in the television industry kept us from getting a fifth season -- and beyond.

I've related before how discouraged I would get from same-day reviews when I couldn't see new episodes until five days after air. When I realized that they must be watching a different show, I stopped paying attention to them. I'm still LJ friends with a lot of people who left the fandom during the first or second season, but I can honestly say I can't understand the mindset.

This is one of the reasons I wanted a Rewatch.

The episode itself was a joy to watch. I've seen it several times but I keep finding things I didn't notice in every episode we've seen. I absolutely adore the way the Trip and Malcolm friendship is set up, and we can see the beginnings of the Trouble Twins here. I think it helped that Connor and Dominic developed a real-life friendship outside of the show.

I do, however, continue to wonder about the PINK LIPS for Malcolm. (Has anyone ever asked DK about that? Or anyone associated with the overall visual design of the show?) I'm almost convinced it was a color error in the video from this ep, since the lettering in the NX-01 hats were showing up as pink too, rather than red. And it wasn't just my TV.

But... that would mean that Malcolm had RED LIPS. Okay, maybe I'm obsessing over DK's lips, period.

What a way to get distracted!

The A/R shipper in me sees Malcolm very upset at the thought of the captain being dead. In the deleted scene, he thought Archer was almost invincible, and Trip sets him up to constantly save the day, annoyingly. Interesting that this didn't actually play out between Malcolm and Jon in near-future episodes -- except that it's posited in A/R circles that Malcolm was intentionally distancing himself from his attraction to his captain by building him up in a more negative light internally. Walls, Malcolm, you are so good at putting them up. It was nice to see you let them down in this ep, even with Jon at the end.

They may have deleted the scene for time, but I think they also may have NOT wanted to blatantly set Archer up as the save-the-day guy, because that actually became a frequent criticism of the character in Those Circles We Shall Not Speak Of Again.

[Brandyjane]

This is one of my very favorite episodes, and I think it is the one I would show to someone who was skeptical about getting into Ent. I could go on and on about what I like about it, but I'll just focus on one thing here: I am fascinated by the insight into Trip's mind. Malcolm - Mr. Reserved - displays all kinds of emotion in his conversation with Trip and a lot of sentimentality in his letters. But Trip, the guy who's supposed to be so emotional, just lets out some irritation every now and then at Malcolm. Trip is so quick to show his emotions when there's not a lot at stake: he cries at movies, laughs easily, raises his voice when he's cranky, etc. Yet when presented with a situation that anyone could reasonably be expected to show emotion about, Trip suddenly bottles up his feelings.

Another thing I found interesting was how at the beginning Trip was so optimistic that it almost seemed like he was in denial. But when the message came through from Hoshi, Trip was the one to instantly realize that they were probably doomed. CT plays this scene so well - the way his shoulders slump, the sudden change of expression on his face - it's just perfect. I also found it very intriguing that Trip was the one to offer to sacrifice himself to save Malcolm. He had probably been planning just that move for some time and was just waiting until he was certain that there was truly no hope of salvation. It also occurred to me that Trip might have been trying to wait until Malcolm was too drunk to stop him. From later episodes like "Minefield," we know that Malcolm is very willing to die to save his comrades, but here, in the end, it is Malcolm instead of Trip who still holds out hope for their rescue.

I also agree completely with Honeybee that Trip was merely feigning anti-intellectualism. While I can easily believe that he reads comic books for fun, I also think he was probably just messing with Malcolm about not reading actual books. I just can't believe that. For such a brilliant man, Trip is extremely popular and well-adjusted. Unfortunately the two don't always go together. I get the feeling that Trip has spent a long time downplaying how truly intelligent he really is to avoid putting up walls between himself and other people. I think he uses the dumb hick act to his advantage.

[entkayjay]

I'm not entirely sure it's a "dumb hick act." Let me pick that apart before it is misinterpreted.

Having lived in the part of the South where Trip was from, I know Southerners. I know rural people, I know city people, I know good ol' boys, I know southern belles, I know steel magnolias. It is the way they are. They don't put on too many airs, they're practical, they're polite, they don't toot their own horn unless it's political or a very astute business person. There's a way to do things, honor is a priority, protocol goes hand in hand with humor. Understatement is a way of life.

This gets interpreted as being a "dumb hick" by outsiders.

But Southerners also understand how those outsiders see them, and they can respond in one of three ways: they can be affronted and come across as arrogant; they can change their behavior to conform; or they can just be themselves and forget anyone else. That's how I see Trip. He's just being himself, understating his abilities and letting them speak for themselves. Everyone knows he's the main reason Henry Archer's Warp Five engines are running. Everyone knows the boys at Jupiter Station can't hold a candle to what he and his team put together on the fly. (Look at Malcolm's accomplishments and the way he reacts for a comparison.) Trip just does his thang; his reward is that Jon knows he's damn good and lets him do the job he wants to do.

Trip is comfortable with who he is, which is why he tends to wear his heart on his sleeve a lot. Malcolm buttons up because he isn't comfortable with himself. Jon has learned (is learning?) the political art of When To Shut Up because as Captain -- and future Starfleet Hero -- he can't afford to Be Himself all the time. T'Pol is Vulcan no matter what, which can look like arrogance (and in some cases is just that, but that's a Vulcan for you, lol). Just as Phlox is Denobulan... but he becomes his profession first and foremost more often than not.

TL;DR: Trip ain't acting. He's a downhome boy who loves his mama's catfish, bottomline.

[tish]

First thing, I'm pretty sure the Shuttlepod would have gotten hot and not cold had the life support systems been turned down to low, and I'm not sure a slow leak would even be possible without blowing the whole thing up (Physics? Anyone?)

I did find this about temperature in space, from a NASA site.....Might glean some light on that.....

"Without any star or planet nearby the temperature of space (as defined by radiation) is 3 K (-270 centigrade), the temperature of the ubiquitous background radiation from the Big Bang, i.e. extremely cold indeed. A spacecraft is roasted on the side that faces the sun and very effectively cooled on the opposite side."