I even bought the ending – sure, the odds of moving Sopek’s green-blooded heart are small, but I think they basically did their best with the cards they held. Mostly they succeeded in sending him away empty-shuttled, which was their #1 goal. I do think that Vulcans like honor and Sopek just wanted to gtfo anyway. Presumably seeing the Earthlings and Andorians aligning more was enough new information to change the game, anyway.

But really, this episode made me glad to be watching Enterprise. There have been a few.

I’ve only ever liked Costner in No Way Out. After I saw the Bergin-led Robin Hood, I could not understand why people liked Prince of Thieves.

There was also something in one of the Creepy or Eerie magazines of my childhood where some kid tasked with taking out the garbage had a bunch of toy soldiers who protected him from the shambling boogie monster that prowled the alley, but I wasn’t remember who wrote and/or illustrated it and the much diminished Google is failing me.

Interesting, I always associated most closely with Ms. Murry. I loved how she was also a scientist and would make dinner over the bunsen burner in her home lab so she could keep on working.

Funny you should mention that, I did have a chuckle over the medlab computer that’s pretty blatantly just a contemporary computer monitor with some tape slapped on. Not sure if it’s appeared in prior episodes and I just didn’t notice or if it was new here. But, yeah, you can tell how much money they don’t have

https://imgur.com/a/2IeOr7m

Yeah, Edgars apologizing for his Mars home being so small did kind of call attention to it.

Speaking of emerging parralels, the Aiel culture, as filtered through Aviendha’s behavior and internal monologue, shows striking parallels to Afrikaner nationalism. Both are ethno-nationalist, isolationist, militarist, and deeply invested in narratives of chosen people, moral/cultural superiority, and protection from external corruption. But this is not ithe result of RJ deliberately modeling the Aiel on Afrikaners or apartheid-era thinking. This happens because of convergent ideological evolution in how isolated, martial, frontier-survivalist groups tend to conceptualize themselves when they face perceived existential threats from neighbors. Shared structural pressures produce similar worldviews, Honor/shame systems are cross-cultural building blocks for group survival . And the parallels arise because Afrikaner nationalism is itself a classic example of the same “besieged chosen people in a harsh land” archetype that Jordan was independently reconstructing from his named inspirations (Zulu + Bedouin + Apache + etc.). It’s convergent evolution again: similar ecological/sociopolitical niches → similar self-mythologizing.

That much is self-evident, but it’s frustrating, leaving a yawning gap in the story like that because you hope to be able to tell it later. JMS, the man who often cited “No plan survives its encounter with the enemy” as a piece of writing advice, should have known better than to assume he’d get that opportunity. He should’ve told it when he had the chance, in the novel trilogy.

No, that was John Forsythe. Zimbalist was the voice of Alfred on Batman: The Animated Series and Dr. Octopus on Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Though his early claims to fame were as a lead actor in 77 Sunset Strip and The F.B.I. in the 1950s-60s.

Agreed, I always thought that was an unusual choice. That always felt like more evidence that JMS intended to tell that story somewhere else.

He was also the voice of Charlie on Charlie’s Angels.