Cease Fire

The Andorians are back!

Dare I say that this show is shaping up nicely or would that jinx everything?

After last weeks episode, that I liked but a lot of reviewers claimed was too “preachy” and “patronizing” this one jumped into the action with both feet. Like later DS9 the show did not slow down to explain who the Vulcans are, why they have problems with the Andorians, nor did it slow down to explain who any of the recurring characters were.

I definitely like this approach as it does not waste any time to tedious explanation and does not insult the viewer’s intelligence. I think the viewer can be trusted to remember who a character is that has been on the show 3 or 4 times since the pilot (not to mention in the pilot like Soval). This approach also creates a political landscape that can be used as a backdrop to tell more involving stories. It seems as if the producers have learned out of Voyager, a show that went nowhere while traveling, and Deep Space Nine, a show that some at first complained traveled nowhere, but later went everywhere. It remains to be seen how well a cross between the two can be pulled off, but after seeing this episode I am hopeful to see more good show like this one.

The timing of this episode could also not have been any better. Currently the United States are lobbying for a war in Iraq while certain other countries, including France, Germany and China feel there is still hope for a peaceful solution. There was a line of dialogue that went something like “why don?t we give the captain and the ambassador a chance to their job before we start a war.” Sound familiar? I guess the next step would be to bring in weapons inspectors of the Federation.

It is beginning to get clearer how humans earned the respect of alien species and in later times became a leading force in the Federation. The way the story progressed was both well timed and believable, yet kept the story moving fast enough to keep it interesting. Along with dialogue lines like the one I mentioned earlier there were also visual cues that simply showed the role Starfleet might come to play. The FX shot in which the Enterprise maneuvers itself between the Andorian and Vulcan ship, as well as the last shot of the Enterprise leaving two ships of opposing factions peacefully side by side could not have been more poignant. Finally CGI is used to tell the story not merely to look pretty.

All in all a very good episode that creates a lot of potential for future story lines. Most importantly though a very good allegory (be it planned or not) that showed peace is possible, even in the most hopeless situations. This is what Star Trek is about. Hopefully we can get more like this.

Next week?s episode looks rather interesting as well as it goes back to the temporal cold war storyline. Whoa! Better be careful or we might all get sick due to a continuity overdose.