Review of Twilight

This is my favorite episode of Enterprise for reasons that aren't immediately clear to me. It's almost like Memento in space, only without the structural insanity. The premise is simple, rehashed from previous Trek series, and soap-opera level contrived, but there's something that makes it special: context. Season 3 is a suspense thriller in which all of Trek's ideals are put to the test against the bleakness of the Expanse and the manipulation of history by time travelers from the future. Wrenches are thrown into things, but our heroes win out by the skin of their teeth again and again. Long-term consequences are made obvious (the Federation won't exist, Earth will be destroyed, doom and gloom, blah blah blah) but this episode actually sits in a possible future where the Enterprise fails in its mission and its crew survives, marooned in the Expanse with no hope of returning to anything like a home. The only hope for the survival of the human race? Temporal Ivermectin to cure Captain Archer's time-worms.

Once again we see Jolene Blalock and Scott Bakula shine and give life to characters that, played almost any other way, would not shine like they do here. The stakes are high and the prognosis is grim. At the last minute, of course, the day is saved--but we get to see what might have been, which makes us care about the outcome of Enterprise's mission and the fates of the various characters. This episode gives weight to everything that comes after it, on top of being an excellent episode of television all by itself.