'Precious Cargo' Review Roundup

See Also: 'Precious Cargo' Episode Guide

'Precious Cargo' seems to have left critics divided, with some enjoying the Enterprise outing and others calling it a waste of an hour.

A roundup of the latest reviews posted online can be found below:

• Jamahl Epsicokhan at Star Trek: Hypertext awarded 'Precious Cargo' zero stars - a rare honour previously accorded to episodes such as Voyager's 'Threshold' and Deep Space Nine's 'Let He Who Is Without Sin.' Here's an excerpt from Jammer's analysis:

  At the risk of overstating my case, I'll just say that essentially, this episode is one big, long, long, long, long cliche. This is certainly one of the longest hours of Trek ever made. And one of the dumbest. And most boring and pointless. There is literally NOTHING here that inspires thinking. The actors are deer trapped in the blinding headlights of the script, coming at them at 60 mph. Wham. Yikes -- looks like this one's a DOA.

  The full review can be found here.

• "It's hard to say whether 'Precious Cargo' is the result of UPN programming chief Dawn Ostroff's threat to make Enterprise 'sexier' but if so it can be considered a dismal failure in that department," wrote O. Deus at TrekWeb. "It also flops as a comedy because Lakshmi doesn't have the timing or the line delivery to keep pace with Trineer and aside from the cliched situational friction, there's not much that's funny here besides Archer and T'Pol's interrogation scene." Read more at this page.

• Continuing the cool reception was 'Keckler' at Television Without Pity, who gave 'Precious Cargo' a D grade. "Waaaay too many episodes already out there like this one -- "Elaan of Troyius," "The Perfect Mate" -- the mind BOGGLES at the fact that I find myself writing the same complaint over and over, week after week, but here I go again: they pay their writers a gad-ZILLION dollars to recycle old storylines with worse actors and lines that are ONE STEP AWAY FROM See Jane Run!" Her 14-page recap of the episode starts here.

• Trek5.com's 'Captain Mac' was more complimentary, calling the episode "an enjoyable adventure/light comedy cast more in the spirit of Lina Wertmuller's 1975 class-clash classic 'Swept Away'." In the full review, 'Precious Cargo' scored 4 out of 5.

• Although monkee didn't think 'Precious Cargo' was a particularly outstanding episode, she did enjoy Connor Trinneer's ('Trip' Tucker) performance.

  Connor Trinneer, on the other hand, was a lot of fun to watch, and he brought the episode up a notch. He did a more than serviceable job as Han Solo/Indiana Jones, so it's too bad he didn't have the spunk of Carrie Fisher or Karen Allen to work with. He tosses off those funny little lines in a very natural way. "Is your entire species so ill-mannered?" Kaitaama asks. "Nope. Just me," he says. And I thought Trip handled everything very well. He treated her with far more respect than she deserved at times, but wouldn't let himself get walked all over, either. And he proved, once again, that he can think on his feet – he was wise to get the two of them out of the hostage situation, even in a stolen lifepod with controls labeled in an alien language.

  The episode scored 7.5 out of 10 in the complete analysis.

• CJ Carter at ScoopMe! also gave 'Precious Cargo' a positive write-up. "Perhaps the fact that the story is tried-and-true is what makes it entertaining," she said. "It's like how you can take just about any of the classics, stick more-or-less to the story, and still come up with a good yarn. Set King Lear in the old west? Why not? Redo Casablanca but instead of Bogart you use Pamela Anderson? Sure. The story overcomes the translation… for the most part." Read more at this page.

Further information is available in the Trek Nation episode guide.

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