Reviews Skip Slowly Down 'Carpenter Street'

See Also: 'Carpenter Street' Episode Guide

Reviews for last Wednesday night's Enterprise episode, "Carpenter Street", have been posted more slowly than usual due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.

• Michael Marek of The Great Link gave the episode a four out of five rating, pointing to the humor, suspense and fine directing as its strong points. Though he had quibbles with timeline issues and the use of the tricorder to unlock car doors, Marek enjoyed T'Pol's nerve pinch and revulsion at fast-food meat. In sum,

  “Carpenter Street” does not measure up to the great Star Trek time travel stories such as “The City of the Edge of Forever,” “The Voyage Home,” or “First Contact.” It is hard to do that in the 42 minutes of story in modern Enterprise episodes. “Carpenter Street” is, however, a fun story that is well acted, well produced, and given the decision to do a time travel episode as part of the Xindi story arc, a well-written episode.

  The full review may be found at The Great Link.

• Lower Decks' Digitalfreak typified the complaints of many fans who disliked the episode, calling "Carpenter Street" an example of "just another filler episode that does nothing to advance any of the hanging story lines we've been subjected to since the beginning of this series." He thought T'Pol's ongoing doubts about time travel were a weak point for her character and didn't accept Daniels' explanation that changes in the past take time to trickle through the timeline, though he did appreciate the episode's humor and the performance of Leland Orser as Loomis. For more read the full review at Lower Decks.

• "Archer and T'Pol do Starsky and Hutch" is how TrekWeb's O. Deus summarized the episode. He felt that "Carpenter Street" was not as visually adventurous as "North Star" and lacked the same enthusiasm for its material, which made him wonder why it was scheduled so close to the Western episode. "'Carpenter Street' has some comic moments, but not nearly enough, and its only real high points are T'Pol recovering her strength this season in her tough, no-nonesense treatment of Loomis," he noted, wondering why the unpleasant guest character was given such a large role. To read the entire review, visit TrekWeb.

• As previously reported, Hercules of Ain't It Cool News said that fans were likely to respond to the episode "with a collective shrug." Giving the episode two and a half stars, he complained that the story did nothing to further the Temporal Cold War. The full review is here.

• Readers at Television Without Pity rated the episode an average B-, with fans praising the humor but criticizing the thin storyline. The site's review had not been posted at press time.

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