Unexpected

It's a shame that this episode was so intent on mocking the character of Tucker when he was unknowingly and accidentally impregnated while on a mission to an alien space ship. The "male pregnancy" jokes were off-colour even in 2001 but by 2022, when trans women are leading the search for the Holy Grail of a freshly transplanted uterus, absolutely nothing is off the table (so to speak). And no-one, least of all a mere Birthing Person like myself, would dare to joke about it.

I didn't think I'd be able to watch Unexpected all the way through this time but I wanted to check out the alien environment again. Sure enough, it felt like so much more than the usual Earth type atmosphere/gravity/vegetation plus forehead-of-the-week. We were treated to some truly original thinking with the strange environment aboard the alien ship. With its vegetable walls, iridescent, scaled inhabitants and organic-looking controls it reminded me of some of the earliest Science Fiction Classics like Perelandra and the Martian Way. Such a pity that all that creativity was put to the service of such an embarrassingly stupid plot.

Lovely actress Julianne Christie manages to telegraph a certain allure despite being covered from head to toe in a reptilian skin. I think this is because of her sinuous, almost balletic, movements which throw into an unfortunate contrast the wooden deportment of our resident Vulcan Science Officer. Poor Ms Blalock was still unsure of her role at this stage and appears to have misinterpreted her instruction to look aloof as necessitating the posture of a dress shop mannequin being rolled around on the warehouse trolley. The Klingons got into the story somewhere but I'd long since lost interest by then.

Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5.

The episode that introduces the concept of the holodeck. It is part of Xyrillian technology.

Trip encounters it when he heads to a Xyrillian ship to repair their warp drive. He charms Ah'Len, a Xyrillian who shows him their holodeck.

When Trip returns to the Enterprise, he finds that he is growing a nipple in his arm. It turns that Ah'Len got him pregnant.

Now they have to find the Xyrillian ship and somehow deal with the potential offspring. Only Captain Archer has to deal with the Klingons as well.

This was meant to be a comedic story, on male pregnancy and unexpected alien encounters.

It was badly written drivel. There is a line where the Klingon commander claims to see his house as he walks on the holodeck.

In fact it was an episode where no one keeps their mouths shut. Archer places the Xyrillians in danger as they were following the Klingon ship by stealth. Tripp talking openly about their holdeck to the Klingons.

That is before going all about the pregnancy nonsense. The Enterprise crew poking fun at Tripp for doing his own bit of poking. Maybe it should had delved into the body horror of an alien pregnancy without getting too joky.

I liked Julie Christie, but watching this "Enterprise" segment I adore Julianne. The obscure actress (the only other program I've seen her in was "Joe Pickett") is absolutely terrific as a reptilian skinned alien who gets a wee bit too romantic with Trip in this humorous and downright sexy episode.

The script by Berman & Braga strikes a nice balance between making fun of Trip's very odd predicament while also including a tense standoff with Klingons as well as a very interesting "wonder" encounter with Julianne's race, as the Enterprise crew kindly helps them with a power problem on their ship.

After a few poor episodes my interest was beginning to waver a bit but this episode pulled me right back in. It's got a lot of things that have made Star Trek great over the years: space jargon, encountering new species, a bit of humor, an unexpected twist.

The Xyrillians are a fun, peaceful new race with great technology. I was a little confused as to why they needed Trip to fix their ship, even though they are far more technologically advanced than the humans, but no matter. It's also fun seeing humans encounter other species for the first time, unaware of customs or even how that species' sexual intercourse works.

This was a great episode for getting some more character development for Trip and really the first great ST: Enterprise episode overall.

She was the aggressor

I find it wholly offensive that somebody spews fake morality and blames Trip, who had nothing to do with it. Second, the alien Ah-Len was aggressive with a bowl of alien ice cubes. 3rd, human sexual assignments sometimes don't apply to aliens. And as somebody else said, accidental pregnancy is not a joke. This was more about the accidental nature of Trips condition, and the way he dealt with it. It also provided humour for the Klingons and broke the ice (so to speak) with them.

How come these people think that an alien reproductive procedure has anything to do with human reproduction, or them personally?

They need to stop watching Star Trek, if they are not going to participate in the science fiction aspects.

I found the aliens that we met in this episode totally refreshing and totally different. It's too bad that we never got to meet these aliens in further episodes. This episode should have been circled back to, so we see how things developed.

And if these species could get the Klingons to back off, we should have met them a few more times. I'm just sorry that it never happened.

Why is my review not being added?