Mott the barber said:
I've been catching reruns of ENT on HDNet and never saw this ep. until tonight. It's definitely one of the best I've seen in the series. Lots of great dramatic moments. I wanted to know what Archer was about to say to T'Pol before he's interrupted "If this works...". I always thought Archer and T'Pol should've ended up together.
What do you guys think of the episode?
3x08 – “Twilight”
ENT’s “Year of Hell”
I really can’t figure out why this episode was so critically acclaimed, or so I’d heard it was at the time it originally aired. Is it because it showed a grim future for humanity and actually shoed Earth being destroyed? Why? Right off the bat we knew that it’d have to be one of the biggest reset episodes ever seen in Star Trek, being matched only by the VOY episode it rehashes –
Year of Hell. So what’s so great about reset button episodes? Is it that we get to see everyone die and the main ship destroyed just so we can reset and see everyone and everything all safe and sound again at the end of the episode? It works sometimes, true enough, as with the case of TNG’s
Yesterday’s Enterprise; for that matter even VOY’s
Year of Hell was actually better in my opinion than what I saw here.
Of course
Twilight got off on the wrong foot with me anyway, by starting in the middle of the episode yet again in the manner that really annoys me. Ooh, ah, Earth done got blowed up.
It was a pretty good visual effect, but it also portends to the Super!Archer! theory in that only he can possibly save the universe, and if you’ve been reading all my reviews, by this point you know I’m not fan of that simply because it belittles the rest of the crew, and frankly, nothing I’ve seen about the man makes him all that great in my eyes, if anything the opposite.
This episode also didn’t bode well for me in that it once again made T’Pol weak and pretty emotional for that matter. Like when that support beam fell on T’Pol she screamed and writhed about uselessly, and yet somehow where her Vulcan discipline and superior strength failed, Archer was able to lift it off of her and get her to safety. This makes T’Pol feel indebted to Archer, who is now nothing more than a invalid thanks to some strange parasites that were conveniently cared on this anomaly and none of the others before or since, and she becomes the nursemaid to him. I guess it would take the patience of a Vulcan to put up with him since he's stuck in Ahab! mode and to have to explain everything that's happened over and over again. But of course this doesn’t even happen until after T’Pol has been given a field commission to Captain, though for whatever reason Starfleet never deemed it necessary to give her a field commission to Commander before this (or after it), and after she utterly fails at that post, because only Super!Archer! can competently command the ship, getting Earth destroyed in the process. Only after T’Pol has been made to fail so utterly does she feel this need to resign and become nursemaid to Captain Alzheimer and become “intimate” with him somehow despite him forgetting everything everyday. But I really don't even buy that. Even if I didn't know that the script originally had T'Pol basically telling him off after he asks the non sequitur question about how far their relationship has "evolved" - I have eyes after all. You can clearly see another bed in the house.
Archer's quarters - note that only his nick-nacks are present.
Out in the hallway - we finally see some of her things on top of that cabinet, which is directly across from...
...her bed.
I'm digusted as it is that a strong female character is made to be weak and inept just to glorify Archer, but the idea that she literally ends up serving as his nursemaid just disturbs me. The joke at the end about it made it that much more lame. I'd say that it's fortunate that this is a reset button, but TPTB had a habit of doing this kind of thing. Just watch
The Seventh for another great example of this - they literally make T'Pol so pathetic that she can't shoot a fleeing criminal that's tried to kill her with a phaser set on
stun. No, they literally had to have Archer hold her hand so she could do it.
At least Trip is made to be a somewhat competent commander, and to his credit Reed makes a decent first officer too (and I must say looks rather striking in a goatee
). We also finally get some more …realistic casualties, but we all know it’s a reset anyway so that effect is lost.
As an aside, I must say that I laugh at Braga’s idea of “continuity porn” again, this time by the throwaway mention of the only surviving Earth convoy settling on Ceti Alpha V.
Anyway, fortunately Phlox has somehow gotten back to his homeworld and has come back, bearing the reset button…I mean cure for Archer’s parasites. Also fortunately, Trip still feels sorry enough for Captain Alzheimer to let Phlox turn engineering into an experiment laboratory. Also fortunately, T’Pol notices the magic discrepancy with the old scans of Archer’s brain that they somehow conclude means destroying all of them by any means will destroy them all the way back to Archer first getting them, changing time because it means Super!Archer! would be able to save the day. Even T’Pol, who has always been presented as being skeptical about time travel despite all the evidence she’s ever seen to the contrary, is in on this magic reset button cure. Of course it’s at this point that we find out that the Xindi are on their way and everyone is screwed, because naturally as this is a reset button, we have to see all the main characters die before it’s complete. Even T’Pol and Phlox aren’t spared, though they aren’t human; I’m halfway surprised Porthos didn’t live to be an old dog just so we could see him killed too.
Actually, for that matter, why did the Xindi even bother to board the ship when they already had it more or less destroyed? All they’d had to do is give it one more good shot and they’ve have killed every single human on board, which seemed to be their goal.
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.
Anyway, I’m sure you can tell I’m not impressed with this episode; in fact, I think it’s horribly over-rated. I feel it is befitting no more than the goose egg I’m giving it; hey, maybe that will help lower the overall average out of all the reviews out there.
