Enterprise Review: “Twilight”

Is it good, or just a Memento rip-off? Read on to find out…

Twilight

Cast & Crew

Director: Robert Duncan McNeill
Written By: Michael Sussman

Starring
Scott Bakula as Captain
Jonathan Archer
Connor Trinneer as Chief
Engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Jolene Blalock as Sub-commander
T’Pol
Dominic Keating as Lt.
Malcolm Reed
Anthony Montgomery
as Ensign Travis Mayweather
Linda Park as Ensign Hoshi
Sato
John Billingsley
as Dr. Phlox

Guest Cast
Gary Graham as Soval
Brett Rickaby as Yedrin Koss
Richard Anthony Crenna as Security Guard

Episode Information

Originally Aired: October 15, 2003
Season: Three
Episode: Six
Production: 058

What Happened

After Enterprise is assaulted by severe spatial distortions, Archer loses the ability to form new, long-term memories, causing him to wake up each morning unaware that any time has passed since the day he was afflicted. Despite the crew’s best efforts to keep him involved in decisions, it becomes clear over time that they can’t continue to function in this manner, leading T’Pol to become his caretaker and Trip to take command of the ship.

Review

Well I, for one, was surprised. I went in, expecting an episode like the movie Memento and got something closer to the DS9 episode, The Visitor.”

High Point

Ceti Alpha V. I love the irony!

Low Point

The episode starts to lose steam towards the end. It manages to pick it up, by the conclusion though.

The Scores

Originality: It’s been done in DS9, but it wasn’t as predictible as we orginally suspected. 4 out of 6.

Effects: Earth blowing up and Enterprise losing its bridge? Cool. 6 out of 6.

Story: Surprisingly interesting, especially the resolution. 4 out of 6.

Acting: Nothing stellar, as everyone’s subdued and depressed. 4 out of 6.

Emotional Response: They manage to make us care about the resolution this time. 4 out of 6.

Production: Nice work for the colony. 4 out of 6

Overall: It doesn’t forward the overall plot, but it doesn’t detract either. All-in-all a worthwhile episode. 4 out of 6.

Total: 30 out of 42

Episode Media

From StarTrek.com

Next Time on Enterprise (November 12, 2003)

Twilight

After finding thousands of humans on a Delphic Expanse planet living in settlements seemingly straight out of the Old West, Archer gets embroiled in a dangerous cultural conflict once he discovers that the humans are systematically oppressing the alien race that originally brought them to this world. [Video Preview]

Additional Notes and Comments

If you’re interested in what’s in TheAngryMob’s review queue, check out my What’s Coming page.

TheAngrymob

20 replies on “Enterprise Review: “Twilight””

  1. Good thing Phlox is immume to time and space…
    Ok, so Phlox destroyed one of the other-dimensional parasites and history was rewritten. All the old photos and tests ever done were retroactively altered to reflect the new reality’s timeline…. everything except for Phlox’s memory that is.

    Apparently those parasites aren’t the only thing that exist outside of time and space. Dr. Phlox has been seen coming out of a London police call box. He aint’ called ‘The Doctor’ for nothing…

    I wonder how long after the show was written did someone pull Michael Sussman aside and whisper in his ear.
    Sussman: ‘Oh. Oh yeah. Oops. I forgot. Oh damn’
    B&B: ‘Just say it was due to the Temporal Cold war Michael, it’s what we always do’

    • Re: Good thing Phlox is immume to time and space…
      I was thinking that very same thing when I was watching the show. It occurrs to me that Star Trek loves to take an interesting concept half way.

      Because when the killed the first parasite, it never occurred, so they then killed the next parasite, which to them was the first parasite, etc… So in fact, when they killed the first one, they should have killed them all.

      Except for that glaring oversight, it was an enjoyable episode.

      • Re: Good thing Phlox is immume to time and space…
        Darn it, you beat me to publishing the idea by three minutes.

        Except, maybe they wouldn’t have distroyed all of the parasites in those the multiple “first time”s… just the minimum number to have Archer minimally functional so that the timeline didn’t go the way of Phlox building and using the super-ray.

    • Re: Good thing Phlox is immume to time and space…
      And if that one cluster never existed, then when they went to try the first treatment with the Phlox super ray, they would have picked a different cluster to start with. And then that cluster would have never existed. So when they went to first try the Phlox super ray, they would have started with a different cluster…

      • Re: Good thing Phlox is immume to time and space…

        And if that one cluster never existed, then when they went to try the first treatment with the Phlox super ray, they would have picked a different cluster to start with. And then that cluster would have never existed. So when they went to first try the Phlox super ray, they would have started with a different cluster…

        That’s not a problem, because for any of this to work, when a trans-dimensional-parasite gets destroyed, it is destroyed in ALL timelines.

        • Re: Good thing Phlox is immume to time and space…

          And if that one cluster never existed, then when they went to try the first treatment with the Phlox super ray, they would have picked a different cluster to start with. And then that cluster would have never existed. So when they went to first try the Phlox super ray, they would have started with a different cluster…

          That’s not a problem, because for any of this to work, when a trans-dimensional-parasite gets destroyed, it is destroyed in ALL timelines.

          Actually, it becomes a problem if it IS destroyed in all timelines.

          • Re: Good thing Phlox is immume to time and space…
            aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgh temporal causality!!!!!

            ;-)

    • Re: Good thing Phlox is immume to time and space…
      But, But, that’d not work with the target audience. They’d never wrap their head around it.

      I mean if they forgot they’d fixed it, they’d have thought the process wouldn’t have worked which wouldn’t let them save the timeline type thing.

      Voyager’s ‘year in hell’ handled it better IMHO. There’s wasn’t a discover it was a ‘screw them, RAMMING SPEED’ and the result of destroying the time ship reset the timeline completely.

      So, in otherwords, it breaks right down to ‘YATI’. Ah, haven’t used THAT one since the old Fidonet days. heh.

  2. It occurs to me that…
    … this one did move the story arc a little. We know that the Xindi will eventually stop saying they are going to do something and actually try to destroy Enterprise. And we have a rough idea of how long until the Xindi can be making use of their planet killer. What were the clues again? I think Trip said it would take 6 months to get warp drive back up to full capacity. And Enterprise was back at Earth (a 3 month trip at least?) when the planet killer was finally used. So left to develop without hinderance, the weapon can be used in something in the area of 8 to 10 months.

    Of course, I’m making the silly mistake of expecting some consistency…

    • Re: It occurs to me that…

      the weapon can be used in something in the area of 8 to 10 months.
      Of course, I’m making the silly mistake of expecting some consistency…

      Hey, meet you back here in 10 months to mock another Enterprise goof-up in continuity!

      • Re: It occurs to me that…
        Not necessarily, it was 10 months without Archer at the helm. Who knows how long it will take with him messing up their plans.

  3. I give up
    As soon as I saw the beginning I knew how it would end – another ‘none of it ever happened’ episode. I just can’t care any more. And now next week’s is going to try to look like Firefly. I can’t wait for that DVD to get here so I’ll have something worth watching.

    • Re: I give up

      And now next week’s is going to try to look like Firefly.

      You mean next week Enterprise will have an interesting, quirky yet satisfying storyline with truly unexpected twists, funny sharp dialog filled with self-referential meta-jokes, and characters that grow and change from episode to episode? Cool! I can’t wait!

  4. Emotional impact.
    I’m not all shocked that nobody here seemed to care at all about the Archer/T’Pol relationship and how it developed in this episode. We want better character development, and when it comes, we ignore it.

    I don’t think Archer and T’Pol should develop a romantic relationship. What I do see them developing is the kind of *deep* friendship and trust that would allow T’Pol to become his caretaker in the first place. This same deep friendship and trust is (or should be) the beginning of the end for Human/Vulcan tensions, and allow the forming of the Federation. (It is only a few years away, remember?). If B&B have any sense, they will follow this path.

    Other things in the ep:

    Ceti Alpha V? Where. I can’t remember. I’ll have to watch the ep again.

    Did anybody notice that one of the people that Trip contacted was General Shran. This seems intentional, but I’m not sure. After all, we have to make friends with Andorians too.

    • Re: Emotional impact.

      ep:

      Ceti Alpha V? Where. I can’t remember. I’ll have to watch the ep again.

      OH MY GOD! BURN THE HERETIC AT THE STAKE! hehhe. Seriously though, uhm, Star Trek II?

      • Re: Emotional impact.
        Apparently everyone was laughing too much at Ceti Alpha V to catch the other reference to the Mutara Nebula as well…

  5. I liked it…
    There is nothing new under the sun, BUT it was still fairly enjoyable. I liked the T’pol/Archer thing, and it fits in with her decision to go into the expanse with the Enterprise.

    It’ll be interesting if they stick with the timeline of the Xindi weapon… which would mean that sometime within the next 10 months they’d have to find and destroy that weapon… which doesn’t really change the storyline because they could have a nice guerilla war going on between Enterprise and the Xindi… heck, if they wanted to make this show really good, they’d just start dropping more earth ships into the expanse to help Enterprise… Make it a small war fleet, give humans some sort of ally in the expanse and make the odds tough. I’d enjoy watching that.

    Good job I think, I hope they continue with these other writers, and NOT B&B.

  6. practical literary license i suppose
    I can see them having a tough time explaining the phenomena had they done it “correctly”. They *could* have done a repeat-time-loop thing where each loop there are fewer parasites to kill, but that would have not been entertaining unless done very cleverly. So, I can forgive the logistical problems this time even though the paradox is glaring.

    On the whole, I was reminded more of the final episode of ST:TNG with the “anomoly” working backwords in time. However, I found this episode even more enjoyable and was delighted that the conclusion wasn’t a trivial dream sequence or such. I tend to enjoy the alternate reality, time-paradox episodes; they’re hard to do right but I applaud the effort.

  7. Fleeing from the Xindi tyranny
    the last starship, Enterprise, leads a ragtag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest – a shining planet known as Ceti Alpha.

    Seriously, am I the only one who noticed the similarity? Then there is the whole destruction of Earth thing. Supposedly this takes place a little more than a year after the first attack on Earth. Now, knowing humanity like I do, we’re not exactly a peaceful people nor do we take it quietly when someone kicks us in the junk. So why didn’t the Xindi have to fight their way through a few orbital gun platforms or something on their run to Earth? It’s not as if we didn’t know they were coming.

    The platforms wouldn’t need to be complicated or anything, just big missle launchers tossing out a few thousand sublight missles. Oh, right, this is Star Trek where the only weapons are on great ships and no one uses missles until they can develop the warp capable anti-matter torpedo. Why I don’t know, since just about every ship to ship combat scene I’ve seen on Star Trek involves two ships at a relative dead stop firing broadsides at each other.

    For that matter, wouldn’t we have sent out secret colony ships just to hedge our bets? Or does Starfleet weed out all of the paranoid military people. I’m guessing they must since not many soldiers that I know would stand exposed in the middle of a ships corridor during a firefight without keeping an eye on their exposed flanks, unlike our MACO ‘elite’ troops.

    Bleh

    Further evidence in the ‘we ran out of ideas so lets rape other peoples stuff’ in the next episode Archer & Co find a planet that resembles America’s Wild West period…… can anyone say Firefly?

  8. Saw Grey Hair
    As soon as I saw Archer with grey hair in the future I thought “throw away episode” and “time altering” episode. Next thought was “Where is the remote” I fast forwarded through the entire thing and then wish I had recorded something else… Johny 2.0 maybe. I was really hoping for a good episode, something that just concentrated on Archer’s sickness and the chalenges it would cause in the day to day afairs of a ship in dangerous waters. Oh well, so much for that.

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