Our First Hurricane

Well, that was certainly exciting. We got to experience a rare weather event here on the island, an event rare enough that even few Islanders have experienced it before. Apparently, Fiona was the most intense storm PEI has seen in a long, long time. By the grace of God, we came through it very well, especially compared to some other places on the island.

We spent three days getting ready; we moved all the chickens and bunnies into the barn, closed off the pig pen to the outside, gave them all lots of food and water to last them at least a full day. We moved every loose item we could find indoors, using an old, rusted freezer and a bunch of logs to keep the back door of the garage closed against the 192-km/hr wind gusts that hit us Friday night and Saturday morning. We harvested as much as we could from the garden, including tomatoes, squash, celery, and more. The potatoes weren't a concern; they're underground anyway. The corn, sadly, is no more; the winds flattened the entire crop, so that's two years in a row that we get no corn from the garden. Better luck next year.

So, Friday night was a hunkering-down time. The animals were checked once more, and as I was coming in for the last time I saw a rainbow off to the northeast, where the storm was coming from. I felt an incredible peace at the sight; that was God, assuring us that He's got this in hand, and we would be safe. I went in to grab my phone to take a picture, but by the time I got back outside, the sun had dipped below the horizon just enough, and the rainbow was gone.

So, the doors were locked and the praying began. The winds picked up here around nine o'clock, and by midnight it was like nothing we've ever experienced before. The rain pounded on the back of the house, but I checked the basement several times, as well as the attic, and there were no leaks, thankfully. We stayed nice and dry. The power went out around one or two in the morning; I was asleep then; Honeybunny had woken up and was downstairs. She came up as the house was shaking from the force of the winds, and woke us all up and said we should all be down in the living room for safety.

It wasn't comfortable, but it was for the best. We all stayed there and tried to sleep; some more successfully than others. By the time morning came, the winds were still pounding, but the dim daylight made things seem much better.

That's when we saw what the storm had done to our farm. The trees in the front were practically denuded of their lighter branches (and some bigger ones); the yard, which we had just cleaned up the day before, was full of sticks again. The worst was the barn; the doors, which we had finally repaired and closed in anticipation of the storm, were broken; one of them was hanging with just a single panel remaining, the others having snapped off. There was a piece of translucent plastic on the roof to let light in that had torn and partly broken off as well. A few trees in the back came down, and as I mentioned, the corn was flattened.

Amazingly, though, that was all the damage we suffered. The barn door is the biggest headache; we need that fixed before winter sets in. But other than that, there wasn't much else to worry about. I rebuilt the outdoor coop today for the meat birds, who are ready to go to slaughter this week, and the boys did some tree-cutting behind the barn to clean up the few trees that came down.

One thing that did come through nicely was our pumpkin patch. The leaves didn't do so well, but the pumpkins themselves? Beautiful. Here's Tanner with the first pumpkin picked from the garden.

  

In behind him, you'll see a tree at the front of the house. That tree has come down; it was leaning over the house and threatening the second floor, so we took it down today as well. Still, all in all we came through this ordeal very, very fortunate.

And, as a bonus, the power (and internet) are back on earlier than expected, so I get to post this blog tonight. Yay!

That's it for now; the tomato plants came through the storm very well, so we're still going to get to harvest more of those before the season is over. And, as I mentioned, the pumpkins are turning orange and beautiful. I can't wait to see how many we end up with by Halloween.

And the Beet Goes On

Another busy weekend of pulling stuff out of the ground. More tomatoes were plucked and turned into sauce, more potatoes came out, and the onions, both red and white, are drying on the porch. And the big one is the beets. I don't even like beets that much, but it was a very satisfying feeling to pull these out of the ground.

That's a full tub of beets out of an eight-foot patch of garden space. We don't eat a lot of beets, so these will last us quite a while.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the process, Honeybunny has been doing an incredible amount of prepping and storing vegetables. We've got bags and bags of frozen carrots, beans, and other assorted goodies down in the freezers. Not all of it came from our garden; we're getting stuff from a nearby greenhouse as well. They provide us with the produce, she preps it and stores it, and we keep half for ourselves while bringing the rest back to the greenhouse people. We've gotten cucumbers, basil, more carrots, and a bunch of other veggies as well. We'll be eating decently for quite a while now.

I really need to get back to writing about writing, but the farm is taking up a lot of time right now; even on days off, it's work, work, work. And strangely enough, it's very, very satisfying.

Harvest Season Begins

I swear, I do stuff besides working on the farm. Honest.

But, as I've said before, there is something truly incredible about reaching into the ground and pulling out something that you planted months ago as a tiny seed. We've harvested tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, peppers, zucchini, summer squash, garlic, lettuce, onions, potatoes...and it just keeps going.

Today, I went for a full harvest of one particular crop: carrots. Behold my handiwork:

The box ended up being a little over half full. Not bad for a first-timer. Honey Bunny is diligently washing them and getting them ready to store; they'll last us a few months, hopefully, or less if we start focusing more on eating what we grow instead of buying it all.

I planted the seeds close together in the spring; that's how I got that many in a small, eight-foot bed. They were cramped, and it showed; some grew around each other, making it difficult to pull them out. And some of them were just massive. Two inches or more across at the top in one case. And they are all very, very tasty.

So, it's a short post today, but it's a good feeling. Food on the table is always a good thing. And my Honey Bunny can do amazing things with food. I can't wait to see what she can do with stuff this good.

The Andorian Incident: Enterprise Retrospective

Ah, here we go... This is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. I absolutely love Shran and the Andorians. For old-school Trek fans, the Andorians made an appearance in the original series episode "Journey to Babel," as a founding member of the Federation. However, they almost never appeared afterwards, except for the occasional Andorian makeup as a background character. Now, they'll finally get their due.

The episode starts in a Vulcan monastery. The monks are doing Vulcan monk things, which looks like it involves standing around in contemplative poses. Then the door bursts open, and four blue-skinned aliens with wriggling antennae barge in. Cut to the opening theme (which I still like).

On the Enterprise, Captain Archer suggests to T'Pol that the ship could visit an ancient Vulcan monastery on the planet P'Jem. T'Pol agrees, but explains that there are plenty of protocols to follow, including a respectful silence, and the monks might not be welcoming visitors at all depending on the time of month. No, not that time of month; the Vulcans are all male.

The Enterprise arrives, and Archer beams down along with T'Pol and Trip as they continue to establish the Starfleet protocol of sending the most valuable and senior officers down into unknown terrain. Sure, they know it's a Vulcan monastery, which should be as safe as a nest of kittens, but still. It's the principle of the thing. Anyway, the Vulcan elder seems agitated, according to T'Pol, and tells her that the Enterprise crew can't stay. Archer and Trip spot an armed intruder reflected in a vase, and the fight is on. They overpower the blue-skinned antagonist, but the other three show up and disarm them.

It turns out that these Andorians, as identified by T'Pol, are long-standing antagonists of the Vulcans, on a par technologically but with a much more aggressive and suspicious nature. This particular group has been here before, believing the monastery is hiding a deep-space lookout post that is spying on the Andorians. Of course, the monks and T'Pol say that it's nonsense; it's a monastery, not a spy center.

The lead Andorian, Commander Shran, interrogates Archer, suspecting that the Enterprise was delivering supplies and/or weapons to the outpost. When Reed calls down from the ship, Shran informs him that Archer and the others are prisoners and warns him not to interfere in the Andorians' mission. Reed, being a good tactical officer, isn't going to take that from a comm voice, and starts prepping for a rescue operation. Meanwhile, the monks bring Trip to an ancient communicator in the catacombs, which he is able to repair. He gets in touch with Reed, telling him to hold off with the rescue to give Archer a chance to come up with a plan.

Archer does so, and the plan involves allowing the Andorians to beat the snot out of him so he can learn that the catacombs do in fact climb up to the main floor, behind a carved stone face. Since the Andorians don't have transporter technology yet, they aren't aware that the Enterprise can send a rescue team down without a shuttlepod. They do, however, detect the unusual energy signatures, charging in to find out what's going on. Fortunately, Reed's team is already in the catacombs, undetected by the Andorians. Reed gets to blow something up, and the fight is on.

The fight goes into the catacombs as Shran and his first lieutenant descend to avoid the now-greater numbers. In the confusion, an old curtain is torn away, revealing a very modern door with a computer-controlled lock. Archer is able to open the door, and reveals that the Andorians were right; there is a listening post that is spying on the Andorian homeworld. He orders T'Pol to scan the outpost and give the scans to Shran. He then calls the Enterprise and tells them to let the Andorians leave. Before leaving, Shran tells Archer that he is in the captain's debt.

Okay, so there's a lot in this episode. It's got some good action, great characterization, and one hell of a plot twist that probably pissed off a lot of old-school Trek fans. After all, the Vulcans are noble, logical, honorable and honest. Spying on another world? Using a monastery to cover it up? That's about as un-Vulcan as you can imagine. But here, it works. Of course, it makes sense that the Vulcans would indeed be spying on an antagonistic race whom they have been in conflict with before. There are disputed worlds between the two star nations, and long-standing grudges on both sides. Naturally, the Vulcans are keeping an eye on the Andorians. And what better to use as a cover than an ancient, non-technological monastery?

Now, the characterizations. T'Pol is in great form; her calm assertion that the Vulcan elder is 'agitated' draws a wide-eyed response from Trip, who still hasn't learned how to read Vulcan emotional states. She and Archer have a bit of a tiff when he quietly confronts her about her possibly divided loyalties if and when the fighting starts. Her response is the most human thing she's done in the show so far: She almost glowers at him and reminds him that she has never failed to obey his orders, then steals the blanket they were sharing. I really think the showrunners were planning for a potential Archer-T'Pol romance, or at least hinting at the possibility. Of course, it didn't work out that way. But that's for later.

Archer, on the other hand, does some pretty dumb things. He didn't need to get the crap beat out of him to find out about the secret tunnel behind the stone face; he could have sent Trip to look through the stone face's eyes to confirm it. But he does get some funny lines when he's giving the Andorians some 'intelligence.' And his own suspicions of the Vulcans and their intentions are fully validated by the end, when he discovers the outpost. He never trusted them in the first place, which of course would make him and Shran natural allies. But not yet...

Overall, this is easily the best episode so far, just as good as the pilot episode. And it qualifies as the first tiny step in the direction of the Federation. I'm giving it a 10 out of 10.

Chicken Math and a Neglected Garden

I swear, this blog wasn't intended to be a farming blog. But here we are.

Today was another crazy, busy day on the Sprigg farm. Since it was my 'day off', Honey Bunny and myself decided to do something nice for the chickens who have been stuck in cages and chicken tractors for so long. So, we built them a couple of fenced-in areas where they could wander around and chew up the grass. Two of them; one for the meat birds, one for the layers and dual-purpose birds. Oh, and the bunnies, too.

These are the Orpingtons and Bovins that we've been raising. Notice the two roosters in the middle (the brown ones with white tops and tails). There's a third rooster, who is only partly visible by the chicken tracotr and the plywood pretending to be a door. The bunnies are in the back, near their hutch.

And these are the meat birds (plus our sole remaining pure layer, Pecky Lynch). As you can see, the birds are voluntarily racial segregating themselves; the white birds are all at the far end, except for one rebel who's hanging out near the water, and the others near the front. The black ones (and Pecky) live in the tractor at the back, while the white ones are in their temporary cages that we put in the enclosure at bed time. Sure, it's not the most comfortable quarters, but they're only going to be with us for a few weeks before they take a trip to the freezer.

Meanwhile, I have a garden, too. And thanks to all the livestock issues for the past few days, I haven't spent much time with it except one evening of watering the plants. I de-tasseled the corn today, for which the pigs were grateful. They'll eat anything. Except green beans, for some reason. How am I supposed to get my kids to eat green beans when even the pigs won't eat them?

Anyway, I decided to apologize to the veggies for neglecting them for half a week. Little did I know what I would find...

For the uninitiated, that is a zucchini being held by a nine-year-old. And yes, it's that big. No trick photography. I found a few of them like that. And I was worried that the soil they were growing in wasn't going to give us top-quality stuff. Holy crap, was I wrong.

I also got a bunch of summer squash that just kept growing and growing and growing. Eighteen of them, all oversized and massive. The piggies are going to eat very well here. Beets, Swiss chard, carrots, onions, corn, tomatoes...and pumpkins. Lots and lots and lots of pumpkins. Even the bean plant is growing now.

It's quite a miracle, really. And yet, it's so commonplace. It's such an amazing feeling to go out and see all the things that are happening out there. And I still can't believe that I'm the one doing this.

Going Whole Hog on the Farm

It's official: We are farmers. What in the hell was I thinking?

Chickens, and bunnies, and pigs. Oh, my.

We bought them tonight from a family who are leaving the Island and moving back to Ontario. My sincerest condolences to them.

So, the pigs are Peppa (the one with the darker splotch on her neck) and George. Two sows, five months old. The question we have now is, do we butcher them both and sell one of them, or butcher one for our own freezer and keep the other one to breed. After all, we spent the whole day making that pen, and we're going to spend the weekend making the outdoor half for them. I don't want to just have them for a few months after all the work we're doing.

Besides, growing our own bacon seeds from scratch could be fun. And Garrett loves the pigs. I'm sure we'll get pictures of him playing in the pigpen before long.

The electric fence should be interesting; we'll have that up by the weekend, I hope. But we'll need to run some power to the barn to get it to work. Either that, or get a really humungous extension cord. Do they come in thousand-foot rolls?

Garrett experimented with the electric fence when we went to pick up the pigs. He found it to be a shocking experience. You may commence the eye-rolling. I'm old; I make dumb jokes.

So, now that we've got our newest farm additions settling in, it's time to do something more relaxing and head back to work in the morning. It's much more peaceful. And a lot less digging in dirt.

The Accidental Garden

There comes a point in every person's life when they start doing something new, and eventually get to a point where they feel they're getting pretty good at it. In my case, it's the garden. Or gardens, since we've got two of them. And no, the rhubarb patch growing by the garage doesn't count.

Aside from the bare patch where the beans were supposed to be, it's a pretty sweet garden. Apparently, other gardeners on the island have been saying that things aren't going well this year. I'd have to say that they're going pretty darn awesome for us. That's lettuce in the front on the left, the bare patch that has one bean plant and some herbs, then carrots and beets on the right. Behind them in the trellis are peas, followed by swiss chard and potatoes. In the third row are the transplants Honey Bunny bought this year: Broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, and tomatoes. In the fourth row it's transplanted corn and onions; the fifth row is all corn that I planted. Finally, there's our garlic patch and our raspberries and strawberries. All in all, it's a pretty sweet garden. Not bad for a second-year effort from a complete beginner.

The second garden isn't going as well; I planted a bit later than I should have, and the transplanted stuff isn't doing as well. The problem is that the soil isn't rich enough for what I put in there; next year, there will be compost thrown in. Still, it's not that bad; I've got zucchini, cucumber, melons, pumpkins, and squash in there. It looks like this:

That's the zucchini in the front and the cucumber next to it; the pumpkins are in the row behind, with the squash beyond them. Along with an absolute ton of weeds that I'm slowly extracting. Still, this is the first time growing this stuff, so I thought it was coming along okay.

Then God decided to show me how it's really done.

That's the third and fourth rows of the main garden. If you'll notice, the walkway is blocked off between them. That is what I didn't plant; that's zucchini, from seeds in the compost pile. And they are taking over like kudzu. They've covered some of the peppers, and the end of the onion row. They're spilling over into the fifth row as well. And those plants right in the front? Those are tomato plants that, again, grew out of the compost that I threw in the garden a couple of months ago.

Here's another angle showing the mutant zucchini plants. I think there are only three of them, maybe four, but they are taking up a lot of space.

So, I'm working every night and three days a week on making this garden happen, and suddenly I've got a bunch of stuff growing on top of it without any effort on my part; I wasn't even watering them because I thought they were weeds. Even the tomato plants grew without my help.

God is very generous. And He is such a showoff. 

Movie Review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Oh, we're going old-school on this one. VERY old school, in fact. This is a 1920 film from Germany that still stands as one of the best and most famous films of the silent era. Best known for its insane set design and its twist ending, this movie still has an impact to this day.

You doubt me? Oh, but it's true. This was the second time I watched this; I watched it in a college course a few years ago. But I didn't watch it alone. I watched it with my middle son, Tanner, a fourteen-year-old who is totally into cool stuff, not Dad's old stuff. But he couldn't turn away.

Yes, it's silent, and yes, it's German, and yes, it's nowhere near as creepy and horrifying as the sort of stuff we've been given in movies for the past few decades. But it's got incredible atmosphere, a very clever script, and as I mentioned, the set design is unreal. Literally. Everything on the screen has a twisted, warped perspective. There isn't a single right-angle to be found anywhere. Clerks sit on stools five feet high and bend over desks piled with scraps of paper. Roads and sidewalks are slanted. It's utterly wrong...and it's perfect.

See, the original screenplay was intended to reflect the national post-war attitude in Germany; the writers, Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, were pacifists who had different experiences during the Great War; Janowitz was an officer, Mayer a draft-dodger who faked insanity to avoid serving. Their original idea was to write an allegory about how the German government had brainwashed the German people into fighting a war and paying the consequences for it. The twist ending was not part of their original script. But without it, the movie likely would not have been remembered nearly as well as it is today.

So, short synopsis. A man named Francis sits on a bench, watching Jane, the woman he loves, walking by, oblivious to his adoring gaze. He tells the man next to him that she is his fiancée, but they have both suffered through a terrible ordeal. The story is then told, with the twisted, Impressionist art and sets leading the way.

It turns out that not too long ago, a man calling himself Dr. Caligari showed up at the festival with a strange and unique exhibit: A somnambulist named Cesare, a man who has slept his entire life. Caligari claims to be able to control Cesare, and wakens him to the delight and horror of the paying audience. Cesare is also able to predict the future, and predicts the death of Alan, Francis' best friend and rival for Jane's affections. That night, Alan is indeed murdered, and the police cannot locate the murderer.

Francis soon suspects Caligari of having something to do with the murder, and he's right; Cesare is the murderer, unknowingly committing crimes at the behest of the insane Caligari. He is sent to murder Jane, but instead of killing her, he abducts her. A chase ensues, and Cesare leaves the dumbstruck girl behind before collapsing in the roadway.

Dr. Caligari (left), Cesare, and Jane

Caligari turns out to be the director of the insane asylum, who has gone mad in an attempt to replicate the experiments of the actual Dr. Caligari, an 18th-century mystic who had hypnotized a somnambulist of his own, named Cesare. When the current Cesare was admitted to the asylum, the director successfully used him for his own experiments in hypnotism. When confronted, Caligari reveals his insanity, and is hauled into a padded cell of his own.

Returning to the bench, we reach the twist ending as we find out that Francis is actually a patient at the asylum, along with Jane (who believes she is a queen) and Cesare (who isn't a somnambulist, just a quiet, staring man with no homicidal tendencies). Caligari is the director, who now understands Francis' delusions and believes he can cure him.

Caligari was one of the highlights of German cinema in the 1920s, along with such films as Nosferatu, Metropolis, and The Golem. It was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, doing well with American audiences. And while the horror elements are incredibly tame by today's standards, they are quite striking for their time.

This is definitely not a movie for everyone; modern audiences often struggle with silent movies. But if it is an acquired taste, it's definitely a taste worth acquiring. And I'm not the only one who thinks so; Tanner enjoyed it just as much, although the twist ending caught him by surprise.

Check it out; it's public domain, so it's available on YouTube or the Internet Archive, as well as on DVD and Blu-Ray. 

Movie Review: The Mask of Zorro (1998)

I reviewed the Tyrone Power Mark of Zorro a while back; now it's time to review this one. And, as a bonus, I got to watch it not only with Tanner, but I even got my wife to sit down for this one, as well as Garrett for a while before he fell asleep. And while it will be like pulling teeth to get her to admit it, she enjoyed it.

This movie is exactly what you want in a swashbuckling extravaganza. There's action, swordfights, acrobatics, romance, comedy, and explosions. It's a recipe that's worked since The Adventures of Robin Hood (although that one didn't have explosions), and it worked very, very well here.

In a sense, this one is a sequel as much as it is a reboot. Don Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins), the original Zorro, is older now and ready to hang up his mask and sword. But stuff happens, and his mortal enemy, Rafael Montero (the outgoing governor of California) figures out who he is. We get a cool fight scene in a burning house, and Diego's wife is killed by one of Montero's men. Worse, Diego is arrested and thrown into prison, but not before Montero takes his infant daughter, Elena, to raise as his own child.

Twenty years later, Montero returns, and Zorro escapes prison to get his revenge. He soon learns that his daughter has accompanied Montero to California, which throws a wrench in his plans. He finds a drunk Antonio Banderas, looking for revenge for the death of his brother at the hands of Montero's main henchman, Captain Love. Realizing that Alejandro (Banderas) is the same kid that helped him at the beginning of the movie, he trains him in swordfighting and courtly manners and turns him into a carbon copy of his younger self; foppish and arrogant as a nobleman, swift, deadly and cunning as a masked avenger.

There's a plot about buying California's independence from Mexico, using gold secretly mined in California that the Mexican government doesn't know about. Alejandro, in his nobleman disguise, finds out about the mine and has to stop the villains from completing their plan and killing all the workers to hide what they've done. Meanwhile, Diego returns to Montero's house to have it out with him, and Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) learns who her real father is.

Big climactic fight scene at the end as both heroes get their revenge, and the innocent workers are saved from the mine explosion. It's very exciting, but the point of the movie isn't the plot; it's in the atmosphere and the set pieces. And oh my, are these good set pieces. The opening scene, the barracks fight, Alejandro's dance with Elena, the infiltration of Montero's mansion, the fight in the barn, the closing battle...it just keeps coming. And it's paced very well, so there is time to breathe between the big moments.

My wife enjoyed the scene in the confessional as well as the dance, and she paid attention through most of the movie. It's rare that we find a movie that we will both like, but this is definitely one of them. We won't watch it again any time soon; she rarely watches a movie more than once. I've seen it at least a dozen times, though.

This is a fantastic movie, one that I recommend to everyone. The only scene that might be questionable for kids to watch would be the fight in the barn between Zorro and Elena, just for the ending. It's played for laughs, and it works, but there is definitely sexual tension throughout the scene. And she ends up topless, although she has strategically-placed bosom-length hair to keep the movie from showing nudity.

Action scenes and swordfighting are a big part of my own writing, so if you want to see how movies like this inspired me, check out my first fantasy novel, The Chronicles of Meterra: Arrival, on Amazon. And support indie writers, because pop culture isn't producing this sort of entertainment anymore.

Terra Nova: Enterprise Retrospective

Ah, I miss this show. It was such a breath of fresh air after twenty-one seasons of far-future, super-advanced Federation technology, fighting the Borg and the Dominion and running around the galaxy like a futuristic delegation from the United Nations. In this episode, we see the Enterprise doing something more prosaic: solving one of the early mysteries of deep space exploration and colonization, the lost colony of Terra Nova.

Terra Nova is described as one of the first attempts by humans to settle another world. Using early-stage warp engines that can take years to go from one star system to the next, the colonists successfully landed on a planet and named it 'Terra Nova', or 'New Earth'. Quite the ambitious declaration. When Earth sought to send another batch of colonists to the same world, the original group protested, and it devolved into a nasty war of words that culminated in TN cutting off all contact with Earth. No one had been there since, until the Enterprise, fast enough to make the trip in a much shorter time, dropped by for a visit.

They discover a race of underground people who speak a primitive form of English, who take Lt. Reed captive and demand that the Enterprise and its crew of 'humans' leave them alone. It doesn't take a degree in anthropology to figure out that these people are the descendants of the Terra Nova colonists, driven underground by a radioactive meteor that poisoned the surface and killed most of the adults; the only survivors were the children, who demonstrated true colonial spirit in figuring out how to survive without any adults to guide them.

In the end, one of the oldest Novans is identified as a young girl from the original colony, and Archer works with the Novan leader to rescue one of the trapped Novans from drowning. The Enterprise leaves Terra Nova without bringing any of its people back to Earth, since they have no memory of the planet anyway and are adapted to survive here. And thus, the mystery of Terra Nova is solved.

This isn't one of the episodes I look back on with fondness. The background is, frankly, weak. The original colonists (of which there were about eighty or so) complain that Earth is sending more people? It's a planet, not an isolated valley. You're going to need some genetic variation to sustain a tiny population like this anyway. You don't want to see the newcomers? They can land on the other side of the world and never have anything to do with you! Threatening a state of war with your home planet when you have zero space capability (having used the colony ship as building materials to get the colony started)? And then blaming Earth for 'sending' a radioactive asteroid to kill you all? Come on. There is so much wrong with that premise to begin with, that it makes the whole episode fall flat.

As for the Novans themselves, the idea is interesting and executed fairly well. The Novans, who were all children and their descendants after the adults all died in the radiation poisoning (why the kids didn't die isn't fully explained), grew up believing that Earth had killed their parents and abandoned them to their fate. Of course they don't consider themselves humans, and treat the Enterprise crew as enemies.

There are some nice character moments; Mayweather is the most excited crewmember, having learned about the lost colony as a child and wanting to solve the mystery. Archer frustrated that he is supposed to be making first contact with alien species, and he can't even do it right with a colony of humans. It's an episode that showcases just how comparatively primitive this show's setting and technology are compared to the original series, let alone the TNG/DS9/VOY era.

Overall, though, this is the weakest episode thus far, and that's two poor ones in a row. This one is getting a 2 out of 10; the interesting initial premise is overshadowed by the terribly thought-out backstory. Very disappointing.

Next time, though...we meet the Andorians. Oh, yes.