Reviewers Weigh In On 'Future Tense'

The first set of reviews for Wednesday night's 'Future Tense' are online. Although some were very impressed, many were not.

• Nick Sterling at Lowerdecks.com was a reviewer that was very impressed, particular with the temporal cold war arc. "[An] aspect of the story I liked was that everything was left hanging in the end," wrote Sterling. "We don't know why the mysterious ship was there in the first place. We don't know why the Tholians were involved. We don't know what was so important about the ship to have two races competing for it. I originally hated the idea of a Temporal Cold War arc, but I'm really warming up to the idea, especially after the high quality of the past few TCW stories." Read more at this page, where Sterling gives the episode a final score of 8.8/10 .

• Keckler at Television Without Pity, didn't like the episode at all, dubbing it "Cause and Defect". "Nothing happened in this episode. We started out with nothing, they threw in some nods to TOS and TNG, and we ended up with nothing. Try as I might, I could not find the tiniest speck of a plot. Plus? This is the sixteenth episode this season, and since I am neither a thaumaturge nor a dunce, I am BORED. " His full review can be found here.

• Giving the episode an B rating, Paul S. Torrez at Section31.com felt this episode injected some new life into the temporal cold war arc — and Archer:

  It was nice not seeing the regular group of Temporal Cold War players in this outing, because I was beginning to wonder if the 'War' was being fought by only three men: Silik, Daniels and 'Future Guy'. 'Future Tense' added another dimension to the war and once again showed the involvement of another race of 22nd century aliens. Another nice change was the fact that Archer wasn't so passive as he has been previously. This time he is actively pursuing facts…rather than acting as though he is an unwilling party, he jumped into the action and showed some backbone.

  The full review can be found here.

• O. Deus at TrekWeb felt the forumla was in fact formulaic. "The action component of 'Future Tense' ... is weak and peripheral to the core story. The action component mostly seems to exist in order to inject some excitement into a Sweeps episode and provide a reason for Enterprise to dispose of the 31st century ship. While the Tholian's first appearance is intriguing, we've all seen Enterprise being chased around and blasted away at by Suliban cell ships more than enough times by now." Deus felt the character interplay was more more rewarding: "Its strength is in the character moments; it works best as the characters respond to the revelations as in the conversations between T'Pol and Dr. Phlox, T'Pol and Archer, and Reed and Trip." The full review can be found here.

• Captain Mac rates the movie 'warp 3 in his review at Trek5.com, felt the episode was confusing. "Archer and T'Pol break the seal to enter the forbidden quarters of Daniels, a supposed good guy from the future, who got killed, but not really. Archer uses Daniel's Delphian futurama projector to look for schematics of spaceships yet to be built in hopes of finding out where the derelict space ship came from (or will come from). All of this is a desperate attempt for 'Enterprise' to be mysterious, but instead leaves the audience dazed and confused. His full review can be found here.

• ScoopMe's C.J. Carter wasn't overly impressed, but didn't seem to mind this outing:

  While all of this was very exciting, and well written, and well acted, the whole enterprise (so to speak) fell a little short. It wasn't from lack of execution, but from a lack of a major story point being pushed forward. At its core, Trek is supposed to be a series of little morality plays. While some seeds were sown for future growth, mostly this was just an entertaining hour that didn't try too hard. Given the stakes in recent episodes, perhaps we should accept this for the respite it is.

  Carter's full review is available here.

Further information can be found in the Trek Nation episode guide.

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