Star Trek Ent - Season 3 - Episode 08
Star Trek Ent - 3x08 - Twilight
Originally Aired: 2003-11-5
Synopsis:
A spatial distortion leaves Archer unable to form any new long-term memories. Years in the future, he wakes up one morning and is stunned to learn the outcome of the human-Xindi conflict. [DVD]
Problems
None
Factoids
- The human refugees settled on Ceti Alpha V, which is the same planet Kirk dumped Khan on in TOS: Space Seed. Sure would've sucked for them in a hundred years or so, if they were still around, when Ceti Alpha VI exploded!
Remarkable Scenes
- The teaser, depicting the sight of Earth's destruction... wow.
- Archer: "I suppose there's not much point in thanking me. A few hours from now I won't remember."
- The Xindi attacking Enterprise. I loved the scene when Archer fought the reptilian in his quarters, stabbing him with the statue of Zefram Cochrone.
- T'Pol's collision course maneuver.
- Trip laying into T'Pol for her collision course maneuver.
- Trip and Reed interrogating the Yridian. Nice connection with TNG and DS9.
- The space battle with the Xindi.
- The bridge of Enterprise being destroyed.
- Phlox' and T'Pol's death.
- The destruction of Enterprise.
- Phlox: "How do you feel?" Archer: "Like a shuttlepod landed on my head."
My Review
This episode is kind of a hybrid of TNG: All Good Things, DS9: The Visitor, and Voy: Before and After. There's a little Voy: Year of Hell in there too, regarding Archer's sacrifice. Yes, the episode is a conceptual rehash, but easily forgiven. I'd say episodes like this are less a rehash and more a tradition. Besides, the four episodes I previously mentioned were all spectacular, two of them even receiving a rating of ten. Well, one thing's for sure. T'Pol and Trip sure made bad captains! T'Pol permanently wrecks a warp nacelle and Trip gets the ship destroyed! Gold star! ;) We've seen Earth in jeopardy many times, even destroyed offscreen. But we've never seen Earth downright explode in an episode before. An interesting stunt to pull. Additionally, I was fascinated to see the bridge of Enterprise shot off during this episode, much the same way the viewscreen of the Enterprise E was blown out and the bridge was exposed to space in Star Trek X: Nemesis. Indeed, this episode features a myriad of wonderful visual effects. Aside from that, an obvious discussion point about this episode concerns the Archer / T'Pol relationship. We know, painfully, from Ent: A Night in Sickbay how much Archer is attracted to her, but this episode presents the information much more tastefully. Their relationship isn't elaborated a great deal though. It's hard to get someone to fall in love with you if they can't form any new long term memories. My one complaint about this episode is that it doesn't end the way DS9: The Visitor does in the sense that Archer did not retain a memory of the events. If he had, this episode could have easily been worth ten points.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
Eh, a 9 is a bit generous for a Reset Button Episode. I think this was mainly an excuse for them to blow up Earth and the bridge of Enterprise. I would not put it in the same category as The Visitor (DS9).
It took the destruction of Earth, the near genocide of the human species and what is truly one of the most heartbreaking of medical conditions to make me feel some level of sympathy for Jonathan Archer.
I have always been fascinated and quite moved by cases of loss of long term memory formation. I was pretty shocked to see them explore it here. I was even more shocked that the story centered around it was actually quite coherent, not to mention interesting and moving.
It's a nice change of pace to see Enterprise tackling an issue other then "-ism's are bad" and do something challenging.
The only thing that really bothered me was the (inevitable) use of the only way to make Archer seem like a good captain, which is to make the people around him incompetent by comparison. This is why T'pol and Trip had to be "bad captains". I understand they had to lose to the Xindi and I don't even blame them for writing this into the episode. It's just a reminder in a great episode that I am still watching a poorly (often, not always) written series.
I agree though, this was a great episode. I don't even mind that it is a "reset button" episode. They tried to make "The Inner Light" and "The Visitor", and for Enterprise, they did a good job of it. I also agree that it would have been nice to have Archer retain some shadow of a memory of what happened. A total reset was uncalled for (a bit ironic though, now that I think about it.. given the premise).