The Bad: This entire episode seemed to just fill in the plot-hole left by First Contact and the discrepancy between The Neutral Zone attacks and Q, Who?. It was a ratings-ploy, pure and simple, for the May Sweeps. Regen did little than to further murk-up the Borg-contact storyline even more than it already is, and throw another timeline-causality loop into the Trek Universe. When did we make first contact with the Borg, now? Zephram Cochrane's warp-flight? Regeneration? The Hansons? The Neutral Zone? Q, Who? There's just too many so-called "first-contacts" in this thing, and too many headaches for the Trek Mental-Gymnists to justify. Was it the radio message the Borg sent here that began the invasion? Was it the Hanson's expedition? Was it Q's toying with Picard? Timelines should be kept crisp and kept simple. Trying to definitively plot out just what the heck happened between Starfleet and the Borg is too much work for anyone to do. Since when is that transporter a 2-person unit? Granted, it narrowly avoided status as a plot cop-out, but I was under the impression that the transporter could only beam up 1 person at a time. A more dramatic method would be to have Reed and Archer beam over sequentially, and beam out sequentially ala Uhura and Chekov in The Voyage Home. That could have added a great deal more tension to that scene, and made things just that much better. The Borg getting beat-down by high-powered phasers is simply absurd. They're fricking BORG for Christ's sake! They just survived the destruction of their own ship, atmospheric-entry, a crash onto the middle of an ice sheet, and the freezing cold for 100 years. They souped-up a simple science vessel into a ship that beat the tar out of the flagship of Starfleet and nearly out-ran it. Surely, they could have survived a MORE POWER!!!!-phase cannon. Bottom line: the Borg should have just blown the living hell out of Enterprise, and a 22nd-Century ship somehow beat them up and a 22nd-Century crew came out with not so much as a scratch by episode's end. Phlox should have become a drone, plain and simple. But, they did deal with it in a way that's somewhat-credible. Billingsley pulled it off very well. Montgommery gave his usual 2 lines, same with Hoshi. T'pol was standard, Archer, Trip, and Malcom came out at par. The arctic teaser and 1st Act didn't leave a lot of room for character development here. Speaking of which, just how the hell did anyone not see that debris field in 100 years? The Good: Great special effects and music. Definetely added to the creepy-motif of the episode. Points there. I think Regeneration had a fairly normal time-allotment for an ENT episode, but the tense pacing made the thing go by quickly. It reminded me of Future Tense in a lot of respects. Nice to see the Enterprise's hull actually get damaged for once. The cut-beam hasn't been used since Q, Who? and it reminded me of that episode quite a bit. It'll probably be cleared up by First Flight, but it was a nice touch, nonetheless. I don't think you people understand just how much the Malcom-spear to that drone PWND. Other points of discussion: If anyone can prove that the disappating-Borg at the end were due to the TCW, I'll raise my grade of this episode by 5 points. It makes no sense for the Borg to beam back-aboard their own vessel just to have it be blown up. That party was meant to assimilate Enterprise, and knowing the Borg, they would not have stopped until that was completed. If that's the case, then that needs to be followed-up on in another episode. Section 31 needs to come about because of this episode. This damn encounter had to be classified so heavily, no one in the main-circles of Starfleet would have known what the hell was going on when the Borg finally came in the 24th Century. If they had trimmed-up the arctic act and finished the episode with something conspiracy-related, this episode would have OWNED MY SOUL First Flight looks to be okay. I'm hoping for a Cogenitor-effect on Bounty, but I'm not really hopeful on those odds. That episode really has the potential to be a stinker.
