Synopsis:
Odyssey has survived her initial battle with the
Archiens. But with her crew decimated, and her new captain unsure of himself,
the fight for survival has reached a crucial stage, as Odyssey's
antimatter stores have been depleted through an emergency pod dump.
When an attempt to obtain replacement supplies takes a turn for the worse, Ro
must balance his desire to protect his crew with the knowledge that without
fuel, none of them will survive...
"Wine Dark Sea"
Story by Beo Fraser
Directed by Beo Fraser
Music by Daniel Chan
Theme by Dex Craig
Review by Roger D. Noriega (*****Spoilers Herein*****)
"Obviously: Starfleet doesn't give rank by intelligence."
"I'm sorry, Do I need to be here for this?"
- T'Lorra & Ro
We learn that we are six weeks into the journey of the U.S.S. Odyssey in the Andromeda galaxy and things are dire. Short on supplies, the crew finds a planet with anti-matter of a now dead planet.
Once the crew beam down to the planet, they inadvertently activate the intruder defense systems and in their escape, they take losses. The Archiens are alerted to the presence of the Odyssey and they prepare for an engagement. The price is high: a crew member is lost and no anti-matter.
Luck brings them to a J-Class Nebula with lots of deuterium - to synthesize anti-matter. An accident on the shuttle kills the attempt to collect the deuterium. T'Lorra convinces Ro to return to the planet loaded with anti-matter.
"What is her name, young one?"
"I do not know, sir."
"To defeat our enemy, we must get to know them."
- General Morrig and his assistant.
Captain Ro must deal with a bickering crew and he eventually sides with T'Lorra and her plan to return and collect the anti-matter.
"A good engineer knows that things will fail."
- Ro to Gillen in Engineering.
In a daring attempt, Chief Engineer Gillen procures anti-matter while the crew is able to hold off the Archien battle fleet with some creative use of dormant technology on the Archien planet. The Odyssey is able to get away with supplies that will allow it to repair its cloak and power its engines.
"We've learned two things from this encounter. One, they are extremely resourceful."
"What was the second thing we learned?"
The ship's name: it is the Odyssey."
- General Morrig and his assistant.
Seram is pissed and she literally bitch-slaps Caecus for the humiliation at the hands of the Odyssey. Captain Ro does not cheer the victory for the responsibility of command weighs on him: "Are we going to continue to lose good people, just because we're stuck here?"
T'Lorra repairs the cloak and the Odyssey is stronger and better able to fight another die.
I do have two major gripes: the away time is beamed aboard while shields are up AND deuterium is the matter component of the matter/anti-matter that drives the warp reaction. Deuterium is not used to synthesize anti-matter. It seems that our friends at Hidden Frontier can make the same mistakes that the 'Poetic License" excuse-mongers from Star Trek made during the 18-year broadcast run of Star Trek!
Brandon McConnell takes the role of Lt. Ro Nevin from Bobby Rice and in his first performance, he delivers! Again, this production has some real nifty special effects and the creative use of the explanation of the plan to attack the planet leading directly into the main set-piece sure did save some "talking time" in the story.
While the story is something that we have seen before, I feel as if this was a story that could have been told on Star Trek: Voyager but wasn't. This one stands on its own and is worthy to watch.
The bickering of the sub-commander and the security chief seems rather juvenile at times, and to me, Maya Stadi is the less-mature one. Ro is not really up to the task of stopping this and he is going to have to do it sooner rather then later.
Matthew Montgomery as Dr. Owen Vaughan does this series credit and still, in my humble opinion, is the best talent on this program.
With a Running Time of 34:57, we clearly give this one a: "You should see it"!
Episode on YouTube: Teaser Act One Act Two Act Three Act Four Bloopers
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