Underrated Trek: Twilight (ENT)

[TMC]

https://nostalgiarush.blogspot.com/2...light-ent.html

Episode pros

One of the reasons I gravitate to this episode is the focus is on TPol and Archer, the only two characters I really liked! I am not normally a fan of forcing two characters together (I am one of the few who is happy Chakotay never hooked up with Janeway) but here the situation makes sense and even feels natural. And the fact they don’t get into too much detail on how close they’ve come helps. maybe this is why the episode stuck with me beside the memory gimmick; it's a solid character episode.

I realize my synopsis wasn’t great so let’s rehash it a bit more. After an accident Archer is infected by parasites which prevent him from forming long term memories. Ever seen 50 First Dates? Yeah. So the first half of the episode is explaining how he eventually lost his command and that without him the Xindi successfully destroyed Earth. These scenes are effective and well done.

Archer was rescuing TPol when he was infected, so she feels honor bound to care for him. When Phlox has devised a treatment, they find that the parasites live outside time and by eradicating them in the present it’s like they never existed at all. If they complete the process history could be charged, but then the Xindi arrive.

The final battle isn’t on the level of yesterday’s but it’s pretty decent, with archer finishing the treatments and resetting history in the last second. Oh and cute having the Earth survivors end up on Ceti Alpha V of all places.

Episode Cons

The one major problem is, like yesterdays, you know that the old reset button is gonna happen at the end of the episode making the whole thing moot. It doesn’t really bother me but I can see how it might annoy some people. And like yesterdays episode since it’s a “what if” the creators take the opportunity to kill everyone on the show and destroy the ship. Heck the opening is earth blowing up!!!

And I never understood the Xindi. They attack Earth because they think in the future Earth will destroy them. So, in this episode they succeed and destroy Earth. But TPol explains they didn’t stop there; they attacked every Earth colony they could find. Why?????? What threat could humanity possibly be at that point????

In my last Enterprise article I talked about how Mayweather was usually underused on the show. And so of course he was quickly killed off in the episode.