Thinking too hard about any of this will only reveal the silliness of the plot. Jolene Blalock is game for these scenes, although her loss of control feels a little too "acted" to be genuinely effective. There are some scenes that work reasonably as tension, like when T'Pol pulls a phaser on Archer, who must then try to appeal to T'Pol's rapidly fading sense of logic. T'Pol begins her own slow descent into madness and paranoia, becoming more of a liability for the away team than an ally. At stake here is T'Pol, who is afflicted by the same condition that has doomed the Seleya crew to terminal insanity. The Vulcans seal off the corridors so the away team cannot get back to their shuttle, so they must now fight their way through another route. The action uses them within a semi-plausible physical world, in a horror-movie setting with unfriendly mise-en-scene rather than colorful bubble-gum flavors. The show is just this side of plausible: The Vulcans may be implacable monsters who do not have the power of reason (so why have they not slaughtered each other, and why do they gang up on the away team, etc.?), but at least they aren't cartoon players. The difference between "Mayflies" and "Impulse" is that "Mayflies" offered unwatchable camp while "Impulse" steers in the direction of respectably intense atmosphere. This is, I must admit, a plot somwhat reminiscent of the Andromeda episode " Dance of the Mayflies," a horrendous hour of action camp that in retrospect was a clear warning sign that I would not be an Andromeda viewer for much longer. In a paranoid, zombie-like state, they attack the away team. The away team (Archer, T'Pol, Reed, and MACO Hawkins) boards the Seleya to rescue its crew, but instead they find a battered ship and a crew of Vulcans who have been infected in some manner that turns them into violent monsters. The Enterprise discovers the Seleya adrift in an asteroid field that also happens to be rich with Trellium ore. The last Vulcan ship to enter the expanse - the one that we learned in "The Expanse" was destroyed after its crew went mad - was the Vankaara, which was actually sent in to find the missing Seleya. The Enterprise receives a distress signal from the Vulcan ship Seleya (as in Mount Seleya?), which was pulled into the expanse some time ago. In that case, turn the lights back on (or drink a bottle of wine). An e-mail correspondent wrote to me, "I think I am on the verge of a seizure," after watching this episode. Not that I'm recommending alcohol consumption (or abuse) in the face of "Impulse," because as it is this is an episode that doesn't need any sensory enhancements. I'm not sure whether that was a good idea or a bad one, but it did make the experience somewhat more. In the couple hours before and during the time that I watched the tape of "Impulse," I drank a bottle of wine. If you're looking for more, you're going to be disappointed.
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Atmosphere - not insight - is the name of the game. The story may be slight at best, but these sort of shows, if pulled off, don't necessarily require much story. "Impulse," it must be said, is also a transparent exercise, but at least it has an edge, with enough grit to be entertainingly disorienting. Action shows like " The Xindi" or last week's " Rajiin" don't do a whole lot for me because they're mostly transparent exercises with no edge. "Impulse" is a workable outing of style trumping substance, and of aggressive production design trumping sometimes-goofy action.
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Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan "Wait 'Til Next Year." - Chicago Cubs fan mantra
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Story by Jonathan Fernandez & Terry Matalas