It is almost like it is as hard to get Malcolm to open up about himself as it is for the audience to care about him. I am not saying I dislike him, but I know basically nothing about him other than that he enjoys getting to shoot stuff sometimes. Also he is British I guess. Not sure why they decided to have his navy loving parents not approve of a ship in the stars, but whatever. Maybe they put that in only to make it understandable that they don't know his favorite food? Also, seriously, he never talked about food at all in his childhood? I bet he is one of those bastards who eats soylent because actually food is just too much of a hassle. Overall though I thought this was a decent episode. Stuff happened, they had to deal with it, etc. I didn't really buy the tension over whether they were going to stop by earth for some upgrades, but whatever. Also, Jupiter isn't exactly earth, but again, whatever.
We open with Enterprise deploying a subspace relay and a mysterious ship showing up, looking Enterprise over and then leaving. T'Pol hasn't seen them before and nothing is logged on sensors. Archer puts in a call to Malcolm's parents to try and figure out what his favorite food is for his birthday but they don't know much more about him than the audience at this point. The aliens show up and this time open fire before leaving which makes Archer think maybe they should head home for some weapons they were promised but weren't ready when they deployed. For whatever reason they decide Malcolm and Trip don't like this and decide to try and build their own cannons instead so they don't have to go home. Sato gets the job of figuring out Malcolms favorite food from Archer and proceeds to make a B story out of it.
The aliens show up again and attack again only this time they also send a shuttle with a boarding part. We get some lame horror movie lighting to make it seem mysterious. The aliens knock out some crew and do invasive scans on them before heading to the shuttle bay and then leaving. Malcolm talks Trip into some sketchy wiring on the new cannons and it is time for a test fire. The cannons work, too well in face and blow out a bunch of relays at which point they realize the aliens left something behind that is producing a ton of power. So Archer uses it to send a message before shooting it with a phaser which somehow doesn't kill him despite it PRODUCING A TON OF POWER. Oh well. The aliens return and the cannons prove no match at regular power so Trip figures a way to overload them again which doing too much damage and it works. They drive the aliens away and Archer brings some beer to the armory. Sato shows up with a cake filled with pineapple, Malcolm's favorite food.
Review: Without some of the flaws above this could have been an actually good episode, but instead they drove it back down to average which is too bad.
5 out of 10
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