Don't forget to give your grade as well, with 10 being excellent, 5 average and 1 awful.
This review is also viewable at my website.
3-08 Twilight
Reviewed by Kevin Thomas Riley
For some unfathomable reason Twilight is something of a fan favourite. I loathe it on just every level and the more gushing I hear about it the more I hate it. I just don't get it! I cannot even begin to understand why it is so liked. To me it's one of the worst episodes of Enterprise, and given which episodes that I've put at the very bottom of the barrel, this should tell you something about how much I despise it. It's pointless, insulting and unbelievable.
I hear the word "epic" bandied on about it, but that's certainly not the feeling I got. It's a freaking Reset Button™ episode. It does not matter in the grand scheme of things. It never happened. No one remembered it. We got to see a bleak future that will never come to pass. And we know this from the very beginning when we see the Earth destroyed by the Xindi superweapon. After that the only question is exactly how and when the reset button will be pushed, and that's become such a tired staple of Trek that I just don't care anymore.
I don't even get the notion that this episode shows the severity of the Xindi threat - the cost of failure. Um, so what? We know what failure means. I know about the horrors of a global thermonuclear war without having to experience it. And since Twilight is a reset button, it's not like the characters would remember anything of it anyway. So ultimately it's pointless.
A more effective way for the producers to have utilized this would've been for them to have the Earth destroyed in The Expanse, instead of just a smaller probe taking a swath of Florida. Then they could have Daniels show up and tell Archer & Co that this wasn't supposed to happen, after which he sends the Enterprise to the Expanse a year into the past to stop the Xindi before they launch the weapon. Then there would be an even greater urgency and the crew would know what would be at stake, having seen the destruction and remembered it.
Why is it that so many fans seem to like these alternate realities, perhaps even more than regular episodes? Doesn't that say that they deep down find the real shows disappointing, that different versions is deemed better than what they are normally presented with? The mirror universe episodes are very popular, for example. Many Voyager fans liked Year of Hell, but I hated that since it too was a pointless reset button. I suppose one could say that a lot of the things presented in Year of Hell is what should've been part of that show from the beginning (and this I agree with), but since it wasn't, those episodes sticks out a sore thumb at the show in general, and since it didn't happen anyway, it was just a pointless tease by the producers. I'm not exactly comparing Enterprise to Voyager. With this season Enterprise has shown that it can stand on its own and be a great show (something Voyager never was), so why pull a stupid stunt like Twilight?
Don't get me started about all the obnoxious Super Archer stuff that I've come to really hate. The message from Twilight is quite clear - only Archer is good enough to defeat the Xindi. Put him out of the equation and all goes to hell. Even Amnesia Archer is presented as the God Saviour of all mankind even when he can't remember what he had for breakfast the day before. He walks around like a pathetic has-been and we are lead to believe that no one except him can save humanity, let alone the ship. Even at his worst he's still supposed to be better and more competent than any other. They make the rest of the crew, especially T'Pol, look like morons for not being able to fend for themselves without Archer at the helm. To top it all off he still gets to save the day in the end, by having those temporal parasites in his head eradicated by blowing up the ship. And he does it after taking three blasts from a Xindi weapon, after T'Pol, who as a Vulcan should be far more resilient, goes down after just one hit. Ugh!
I don't mind strong Trek Captains but they shouldn't be strong at the expense of the other characters. I never saw Spock or McCoy made to look weak just so Kirk could look strong. A truly great crew should build upon the strengths of everyone, together. I don't mind the fact that Archer is supposed to be pivotal in the founding of the Federation and all that jazz, but I hazard to guess that without a competent crew he would never ever get to play that role.
Further, to add insult to injury, we have Nursemaid T'Pol forsaking everything just to take care of Amnesia Archer - day in day out for twelve years. Sheesh! She's reduced from a strong, independent woman to a freaking babysitter for an adult. And this is viewed as romantic? What kind of twisted romance would that be? It's just disgusting. Archer is the equivalent of an Alzheimer patient and T'Pol is his nurse. Even hinting at something romantic is just plain icky. The idea that a nurse would start a "relationship" with a patient with whom she never had been involved with prior, is wrong and inappropriate of the highest order. Archer has amnesia and will forget everything after six hours or so. He's a mental patient without his full faculties. He can't form a relationship with anyone and he cannot give consent.
This makes T'Pol's comment that their relationship has "evolved" over the years completely implausible. It cannot evolve. Evolution is gradual change over time, but Amnesia Archer is thrown back in time every night. He can't remember anything and T'Pol has to start from scratch the very next day, again and again and again, while Archer is perpetually stuck in Captain Ahab mode. There just can't be any evolution of anything at all.
I don't get why T'Pol decided to stay with Archer at all. It's certainly not logical. Her skills would be much more needed for the rest of the Enterprise, and the surviving fleet. It would also mean that more people could share in taking care of Archer. And why didn't she take up Soval on the offer that she should go to Vulcan with him, where Archer could be treated and cared for by experienced Vulcan physicians? That would've been the most logical course of action. But instead she gave up everything to nurture an ailing mental patient on an oblique world. Is that why some people think this is romantic? That T'Pol gave up her life and fell in love with someone who cannot reciprocate or even be there emotionally and mentally for her, but she still remains in this one-sided "relationship"? I don't know, but I don't find this romantic at all.
I cannot even understand why the small sub-sub-set of Archer/T'Pol 'shippers like this episode so much. Yeah, I know that this is pretty much all that they've got, but still… The "relationship" here is nothing but sick and twisted. Is this really how they view how a relationship between them would work - a strong woman giving up her career to stay at home to care for her big man? I'm insulted, and I'm not even a feminist! And I wanted to suffocate Archer with a pillow when he at the very end of the episode said to T'Pol that she'd make "a wonderful nurse"! Forgive me if I go and hurl!
In fact, what struck me instead was the bizarre amount of guilt T'Pol must have felt. First Archer saves her from the anomaly in the corridor (never mind that she as a Vulcan should've been stronger than him and should've been able to pull off that beam from her legs) and gets zapped by the temporal parasites in the process. And then she's in command when the Xindi blow up Earth, and feels she's responsible since it was she who crippled the Enterprise so that they weren't able to catch up on the superweapon. Her acting as Archer's caretaker was her form of penance. That's the only explanation that makes sense, and even that is stretching it. I just saw it as too out of character for her to act this way, even if we take into account her occasional and inexplicable display hero-worship of him.
Even if the story left a lot to be desired, the episode had some really nifty visuals, but that's what I've come to expect of this show. From Earth getting blown up to the final space battle, this time involving some other Starfleet ships (like the very cool looking Intrepid), it was a feast for the eyes. Even more pleasing to the eyes was T'Pol with long hair and a stunning casual civilian outfit. I know some people found T'Pol in a Starfleet jumpsuit/uniform good, but I didn't care for it. I think those things look ugly and didn't do justice to Jolene's awesome figure. I don't think they look good on anyone, really. Sue me, I'm shallow and I like her coloured catsuits!
The Ceti Alpha V reference was a nice nod to the planet where Kirk stranded Khan and his men. A bit ironic if what was left of humanity had remained there, since we know what happened to that planet between the original series episode Space Seed and the movie The Wrath of Khan.
Given my above stated intense dislike of Twilight it should come as no surprise that I only give this episode a grade of 2- on my 10-graded scale. I should give it just a 1 but long-haired T'Pol and the impressive visual effects earns it one more point, even if I feel that I'm probably too generous here. Nothing will ever convince me that this is a great episode!
). We also finally get some more …realistic casualties, but we all know it’s a reset anyway so that effect is lost.
Anyway, so it comes to pass that a throwaway line from Phlox actually turns out to be the magic reset button cure, and Archer is able to take multiple hits and set Enterprise’s warp core to self destruct just before he dies. So, basically Archer wakes up in sickbay again, none the worse for wear, and we’re right back to where the story “started”, or at least to where T’Pol started from when she brought Archer (and us) up to speed through all those flashbacks.
Good one!