Impulse

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Trellium-D is great for insulating a starship against the spatial anomalies of the Expanse, but the stuff is bad for Vulcans in every way. I'm not suggesting humans could use it as a sandwich spread, but it's murder on the space elves. Along the road to an ugly, ugly death is emotional collapse, neurological damage, slight zombism, irreversible neurological damage, moderate to severe zombism, and death. It's exactly like lead paint... only blue.

The crew of the Vulcan ship Seleya, caught between a lot of rocks and a lot of hard places, started slopping trellium around and soon got all rotting and bite-y. Synchronized dance numbers by the king of pop were not forthcoming. The tables are turned from "Extinction"... as Archer must contend with a feral T'Pol, and also 147 incurable super-strong Romulan-like monsters. And so I ask again: why wasn't this season the start of the long-anticipated and canonical Romulan War? Very effective horror story provided you're not prone to seizures from strobing lights and fog machines. And, because the genre has flipped totally on its head since last week, Phlox can't simply drop an instant cure in anyone's lap. He can't even ameliorate anyone's suffering. The kindest thing to do, somehow, is beat the victims to death and blow up their ship. Like heroes.

I remember scratching my head during "Impulse" and wondering what prompted them to create an action-packed epilepsy-inducing Vulcan zombie thriller video before I realized I answered my own question. This is what we get now. It's the decade of the living dead!