Future Tense

Season 2, Episode 16, Aired
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Episode Summary

The Enterprise crew find a small craft drifting in space and are surprised to find it contains a human corpse. More questions arise when both the Suliban and Tholians make claims to the craft.

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Fan Episode Reviews (2)

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  • Truly awful lazy just bad and nothing really to do with the temperal cold war

    2.3
    "Terrible"
    By dregj, Oct 22, 2011 Report Abuse
    Archer and co find a small space ship
    it turns out to have a human pilot
    and is a time ship from the distant future.
    Unfortunately the tholians and the suliban
    get a tip off about the vessel and come looking for it.
    The two temporal enemies virtually ignore the enterprise
    and focus on each other
    when the tholians are victorious they demand the time ship
    trip manages to activate the time ships beacon
    and those future guys teleport it away just in time

    An episode riddled with plot holes
    pretending to be about the temporal cold war but is just an excuse for a battle and some doctor who references.

    This episode should disapear to where ever the time ship went to

    (up the producers arse)moreless

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    2 12

  • Enterprise handles a hot-potato

    7.0
    "Good"
    By AvatarBlue, Dec 04, 2010 Report Abuse
    An episode with a simplistic storyline that has little or no bearing to the season timeline. At least not yet.

    Enterprise discovers a 'Temporal' hot potato in the form of a battle-damaged spaceship, of unknown origin. To add to the mystery, readings indicate a futuristic tech and a maelstrom of dna indicating several generations of interspecies breeding - a craft from a possible future?!

    It is while examining the ship that several races turn up to pitch their claim. Queue a classic format one-against-many plot device.

    Outnumbered and outgunned, Enterprise struggles to stay alive as the Suliban and the xenophobic Tholians. Which signals the start of several action oriented encounters, the key one being an entertaining Sulliban assault onboard Enterprise.

    There is a scene where Archer enters the locked room containing future tech to discover its 900 yrs from the future. In my view this isnt used enough... and could be used more to hint at Archer's eventual fate in ST:TOS, as he always seems to be getting into trouble.

    As for the rest of this episode, the crew end up fighting against another foe. For alongside the sequence of space combat encounters, the threat of leaking temporal radiation plays some nasty tricks on the crew, as they begin to experience ever increasing Deja Vu or time loops.

    As the situation inevitably increases the inevitable dilemma of what to do with the ship increases. Do they destroy it? Hand it over to the squabbling factions? Or is there some other way? Ultimately though, you may guess what happens.... for me it was part of an unsatisfactory, yet resonant ending. Made deliberately frustrating by the final twist affecting Archer's preferred path of action.

    And there lies the problem with this episode. A straightforward plot, with a good amount of twists and turns, lots of good scenes that add to the whole experience, but ultimately a plot that has no real consequence to the overall season-arc, which doesnt add anything character-developmentwise, does introduce anything new and ultimately just doesnt matter. The TARDIS like interior of shuttle sized ship could have added more depth to the plot, but because of the CHASE element part of the plot, couldnt be better explored. Which is a shame because I probably would have preferred that, esp. if they'd learned new tech from it! As it was, a decent episode of action based drama and very little else.moreless

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    2 1
 

Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

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    • Trivia: The healing device used to heal Lt. Reed's leg in the episode "Dead Stop" can be seen in the background of Shuttle Bay 2 when Archer and T'Pol are examining the alien ship. Edit
    • Trivia: Archer initially wonders if the dead pilot is Zefram Cochrane, who disappeared several years earlier. Of course, what really happened to Cochrane is revealed in the original Star Trek episode "Metamorphosis". Edit
    • Trivia: The uniform worn by the dead 31st century historian is similar to that worn by Daniels in many episodes. Edit

  • Notes

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    • Mike Sussman revealed that the original episode idea was much different than what made it to screen. Originally, the story had the Tholians capturing a ship from the future and the Enterprise crew trying to stop them from stealing its technology. The ship in question would've been the USS Defiant from "The Tholian Web". According to Sussman, that story was scrapped due to (among other things) cost. That storyline eventually was used in the fourth season episode "In a Mirror Darkly" (Parts 1 & 2). Edit
    • Originally Titled: "Crash Landing" Edit

  • Quotes

    ADD QUOTES
    • Reed: When I was young, I always wanted to build a time machine...see the future.
      Tucker: You're probably the kind of person who jumps to the end of a book before you read it.
      Edit
    • Reed: (entering a ship bigger on its inside than its outside) This gives space exploration a new meaning. Edit
    • T'Pol: (to Archer) There are significant biological differences between the species. It is unlikely we could reproduce. (short pause) Humans and Vulcans. Edit

  • Allusions

    ADD ALLUSIONS
    • Archer: If a Human and a Vulcan did have a child, I wonder if he'd have pointed ears. A subtle allusion to the character Spock from Star Trek: The Original Series. He is half-Human and half-Vulcan, and much is made of his pointed ears. Edit

    • Doctor Who The abandoned vessel featured in this episode was inspired by the TARDIS from Doctor Who.

      Edit

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