Day 328: Enterprise, Twilight

Show: Star Trek; Enterprise

Episode Particulars: S3EP8, “Twilight”

 Summary: When Archer wakes up one morning, things are very different. His hair has gone grey, there’s sunlight in the windows, and T’Pol is making him breakfast. She explains to him that twelve years have passed, and thanks to an anomaly in the Expanse infecting him with brain parasites, he’s unable to remember anything new. He did his best to continue with his mission, but eventually, his condition was such that Starfleet relieved him and replaced him with T’Pol. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, and the Xindi destroyed Earth. Now there are only six thousand Humans left, but there is good news on one front; Phlox may have found a way to kill the parasites, so at least Archer can start making memories again. Though given the situation, he might not want to.

Standalone Thoughts: Even though everything I’m about to say is going to be fairly obvious, given the way Star Trek works and the fact that there’s still a little over a season and a half of Enterprise to go, I’d still rather allow first-time viewers to be relatively surprised. So the rest of this review will be a SPOILER review, including all the other sections. My apologies for that, but sometimes the episode content demands it.

*So with that out of the way…*

Looking at this episode solely as its own entity, it’s not too bad. It’s a familiar trope and the way of fixing the problem (the parasites are affected through time!) is classic technobabble Deus ex Machina, but it’s a good way to explore a darker Enterprise universe. The episode also has the guts to kill off all the main characters, so you have to kind of admire that. And while it can be uncomfortable to watch (especially if you’ve had personal experience with it), Archer’s memory loss and therefore inability to be the man he once was is portrayed in a way that will be very familiar to anyone who’s watched a loved one struggle with things like dementia or Alzheimers, which at least means it was well-written enough to elicit emotions from the audience. Like I said about episodes like “Dead Stop” or “Extinction”, this could make for a good original short story, or even an episode of Star Trek (any iteration). The problem is, it works if the episode is a standalone, and the aliens that destroy Earth are some random one-off aliens, thus making the whole story self-contained. Doing it during the Xindi arc causes a bunch of problems, though they all kind of boil down to the same one; it winds up being pointless in the end.

This episode is probably best compared to “Vanishing Point”, which took place almost entirely in Hoshi’s head. But at least in that episode, Hoshi remembered it all happening, and probably used it as a way to be less afraid of the transporter going forward. By contrast, nothing is retained in this episode—Archer comes to in Sickbay shortly after the accident, and has no recollection of the possible future ahead of them. In other words, we just spent forty minutes watching something that may have been well written, acted, and shot, but that not only won’t allow the characters to theoretically learn and grow, but contributed nothing to the Xindi arc. Like “Extinction”, you could cut this episode and lose nothing. In fact, the arc would probably feel more cohesive if you replaced it with an episode dedicated to either tracking down the Xindi or developing the characters some more. As I said yesterday, the Malcolm-Hayes rivalry could do with some more “show don’t tell”…

I sound like I’m ragging on the episode, but I’m more frustrated by the slow pace of this arc than I am with the episode itself. It does have good points that I outlined in the first real paragraph (though I could do without the teaser; it’s effective at drawing you in, but it doesn’t directly connect to anything else in the episode, making it ultimately feel like a bait-and-switch), and if you watch it without context, it’ll probably come across as a pretty good episode, “it was all a dream” ending notwithstanding. Quality-wise, I’d probably rank it somewhere in the middle of the series. Given the context, though, I’d probably ultimately consider it lower tier. To quote The Godfather, “Nothing personal. It’s strictly business.”

How it Relates to the Whole: Needless to say, this episode winds up having nothing to do with future events. It does, however, include a small reference to the TOS Star Trek movies, so at least there’s something in there for those who like mentions of Trek lore.

Other: *Nothing today, which seems appropriate given how little the episode has to do with anything else. We’ll see if the next episode has anything to comment on.

Badass Malcolm Moment: It ultimately comes to nothing and we don’t get to see him in action, but the mere fact that Malcolm got promoted to captain is enough to make me nod in approval. I just wish it hadn’t taken Starfleet so long to do it.

After the Fact Update: My feeling that this would make a fine standalone Star Trek episode was spot on; apparently it had originally been intended for Voyager, but writer Mike Sussman wasn’t able to sell it. He ultimately thought it worked better “with the background of the Xindi war upping the stakes”, but as this review shows, I very much disagree with that. The episode was also considered the most popular Enterprise episode around the time of the show’s cancellation, and I obviously disagree with that one too. Though given how I felt about “The Visitor”, that’s probably just par for the course for me.