This is being aired again this Wednesday. We're taping this time for our permanent collection. We haven't done that with any other episodes except the series premiere (and that's more for reference than for anything else).

Aw, that's nice, keckler. I didn't think you were too crazy about this ep at first.

Really? I thought I positively raved about it in my recap.

My bad. [sic] I think I'm getting this one mixed up with "Similitude".

"Twilight" is one of my favorites of this whole series, and I don't have many. (I can count them on one hand.) In fact, it's probably among my favorites of all Trek. That Vulcan loyalty gets me every time. *sniffle*

I do find it kind of funny how UPN is touting tonight's showing as this "must-see" ep, as if it isn't a repeat.

It's the destruction of the ship that really makes me catch my breath -- especially the bridge portion.

Yeah, I was iffy on "Similitude" but some of it still got to me.

I missed this one on the original airing, then caught it on the weekend repeat and halfway through I was really wishing I had taped it. I'll definitely tape it this time and it may even get the 'burned to DVD' treatment. DVD-Rs are still kind of expensive so I use them sparingly.

I do think it's a keeper episode with Archer removed from command (long overdue in my opinion, head injury or not) and we're treated to both Captain T'Pol AND Captain Trip. But I think it had one really flawed scene, the one where Trip pretty much blames T'Pol for everything bad that happens because she rammed Enterprise into the enemy ship. This made no sense. As Keckler said in the recap, what else was she supposed to do? They were being overrun with Xindi and would probably have all been killed then and there. At least she got them some more time and a chance for survival.

Since Proving Ground was kind of an alternate version of Twilight, I wonder why they didn't air this repeat before Proving Ground.

I thought Trip was doing an engineer's 'you hurt my ship' thing (combined with his general Xindi hate). Engineers get precious about warp engines. I wonder if we'll find out that Charles Tucker the First was Scottish?

And Keckler, it was your recap of Twilight made me take a look at this episode at all (and register here). I'd not seen Ent for ages before that. This ep's definitely a keeper.

Aw, that's so sweet!

Bump. Sigh.

Something that came up in the "Proving Ground" thread, but really fits better here. Why were the Andorians helping the humans in the future of "Twilight"? Why did Shran give them shields?

My theory is that the non-humans of the galaxy figured out that which we don't know: why the Xindi want to exterminate humans. I think they figure that the Xindi aren't likely to come after them just because they helped the humans. They know the Xindi will attack them if they try to protect the humans directly, but a little surreptitious help probably won't hurt. Once they destroy humans, the Xindi will consider their task done.

On the other hand, Phlox had to sneak his way to Ceti Alpha VI. So maybe the Denobulans don't feel the same.

Actually, that's one thing I'm not clear on. The fellow who was hired to follow Phlox - was it made clear who hired him and why? The parasites were the accidental byproduct of an anomoly so what was it with Phlox being followed?

I could have sworn the intro graphics said "All New". i didn't see this episode the first time around, so I didn't realize it was a repeat.

Really good episode. Nice personal moments between Archer and T'Pol. Kinda touching. Wish some of the other characters had a chance to shine that way.

Shouldn't Reed have been saluting the Empire and putting pain inducers on Hoshi when she tried to assasinate... Oh, never mind. That was a daydream I had.

And what's up with Star Trek channelling "Battlestar Galactica"? Is Ron Moore on staff again?

Hey, is there some sort of law of physics that says weapons with the power to blow up planets need to be mounted inside ships the size of a small moon?

These episodes (the ones where "Earth gets blown up", "Voyager gets blown up", "Enterprise D gets blown up") usually end up leaving you feeling a little ripped off, since something has to happen to reset everything, but this one worked pretty well, I thought. Kind of clever way to deal with it, having temporal parasites. And I liked the fact that they went ahead and killed everybody AND blew up the ship. If you're going to reset, why not show us a bunch of stuff that never gets to happen? The only knock I ever had against "Yesterday's Enterprise" was that they didn't show the Enterprise D bite it in a huge blast of plasma at the end. It was cool to watch Enterprise Jr. bite the dust. Must be the computer effects being so much cheaper and easier.

Two little nitpicks. One, how come one shot takes down T'Pol (Vulcans are stronger than humans, right? even the women, right?), but it takes THREE to kill Archer? I know the future of humanity is at stake, but three shots, especially the one right in the back, should have knocked him out. Two, isn't Engineering in the aft part of the saucer? So the Enterprise should have blown up from amidships first, rather than from ahead of the bridge.

It was cool to see the bridge get sliced open, though.

All the spy alien says is that he was hired through an intermediary (which I take to mean, a completely different alien race. Left up to our imaginations I guess, pick one). He didn't know he was hired by Xindi.



The Xindi had at least some knowledge of Enterprise and the make-up of its crew, right? I'm just going on pre-"Twilight" continuity here, but they have had the opportunity to scan Enterprise and gain intel such as what other species the crew is carrying, right? Perhaps they'd been carrying out their own careful supervisions of the Enterprise and its crew beforehand, or had another race working with them, and noticed that a denobulan was making a lot of back-and-forth trips between Enterprise and wherever else he had to go to do his research (I know they mentioned Ceti Alpha 5 or something like that, but Phlox might've traveled to other planets for help as well). So, they hired the spy to keep a closer eye, who'd be able to report back sooner than whoever was watching Phlox and the remaining humans beforehand. They also may've known about Archer's condition and didn't want him cured and...nevermind, I just realized I'm making this more complicated than it is. They only wanted to follow Phlox on the off chance that he'd lead them to where the bulk of the last remaining human survivors were hidden.

Weren't the Xindi tipped off about Earth from one of the future time-travelling groups? So wouldn't they know that there's a future where Phlox ends up curing Quantum and Enterprise finishes its mission and the Xindi get destroyed again? So they told the Xindi they need to keep Phlox from leaving Denobula.

Or maybe the Xindi noticed that Phlox (a doctor) was doing a lot of work with quantum(no pun) physicists and other non-medical types, put two and two together, and said, "He's trying to find a cure for temporal parasites!" And since it seems only one man in the entire universe is afflicted with said critters, decided that Phlox must die before helping Quantum.

Or maybe they just wanted to kill Phlox because they have "no time for smugglers who dump their cargo at the first sign of an Imperial cruiser". Cause Phlox was a smuggler for awhile in this alternate universe. Hey! It could happen.

Jabba no bada.

Anyway...what stuck out at me most was how awesome Phlox's kurta-pajama was! Great outfit for him. Just another example of everyone being better looking in the future. Except for poor dead Mayweather.

T'Pol got shot right in the center of her chest (approxmiately where the Vulcan heart is, right?). Quantum's first hit got him in the shoulder. He was collapsing after the shot that hit him square in the back, but he eked out enough strength to push the last button. Because he's the hero. It's less about quantity of shots, and more about where they hit.

I can see why so many people missed Maywho's death the first time around. We don't see him get hit, we just see him lying on the floor. The ship is shaking, and the camera is moving, so we only see his face for a second. And that face is full of blood. And then no one says anything about it.

That's how I always read it, Cleo. Although, isn't the Vulcan heart in the butt or something? I thought I remembered it being in a really weird place in a TOS episode when Spock goes under the knife.

I think the Vulcan heart is where the human liver is.

Don't Vulcans have two hearts?

Klingons have redundant organs.

Heh. I really didn't mean to diverge us on this tangent. I was just going to say she got shot in the heart, but then I realized the Vulcan heart could be in the toe or something, because TOS liked to be just that wacky. Regardless, there is undoubtedly some vital organ in the center of Vulcan anatomy that can instantly render a Vulcan unconscious or dead when said organ is struck by Xindi weapons fire.

Since when? This episode? I remember Spock getting shot with a bunch of killer spores by Val, right in the chest, and bouncing up a few minutes later. It killed that red-shirt earlier and he barely got hit.

And he walked right into the Enterprise main reactor room to readjust the dilithium crystal chamber and he was only wearing gloves. Gloves, man! No radiation suit.

And remember, Spock was only HALF Vulcan. That meant he was half wuss, uh, I mean human. He even survived an entire episode without his BRAIN. He's like Jack LaLane.

T'Pol's a wuss. Take a little weapons fire like a Vulcan, will you?

maybe all the time around humans made her soft.

RichardCranium, I have already asked you to READ THE FAQs and the RULES! If you read EITHER, you would know that double-posting isn't tolerated on these boards.

If I find that you do something else that's in violation of the rules, you're gone.

It's screaming out for a missing scene fic. I'd be interested in seeing whether or not it was explained in the original script.

Maybe they sent one of the other Xindi species to talk to him. Who knows how many of the 5 had been seen outside of the Expanse at that point?

Unless the Xindi somehow caused the anomolies, which doesn't seem likely because they don't appear to be very bright.

Like many others, loved the episode and loved seeing it again this past week. And I'd like to add just a small comment regarding 12 years older Archer's hair. On the second viewing, it looked almost exactly like Soval's (I hope that's his name!) hairstyle. Or at least, it had quite the Vulcan "bowl" style. Made me giggle a little.

Also because the grey reminded me of a highschool play where the baby powder put in someone's hair to make him old came out in clouds whenever he moved.

Yeah, imagine waking up every morning with no memory that you look like such a dork (and a circa 1989 dork, at that), then needing to be reminded!

"Oh, the Earth has been destroyed, humans have been reduced to a wandering band of scavengers, and (handing over mirror), you look like a total dork!"

At least he'd forget again, in a few hours.

All in all, a pretty good episode, though.

T'Pol must've been his barber, too.

T'Pol's Alpha Ceti V hair was no great shakes. It made her look like she was trying to hide a receding hairline and not succeeding. Maybe that's why the Archer-as-dork line was cut (like the way I'm presuming it was there?) because someone realised that the obvious comeback was Archer saying, 'Looked in a mirror lately fright wig girl?'

I'm sure that was one of Soval's wigs on Archer.

Also, another point: imagine waking up every day and learning your beloved dog has gone to that big dinner bowl in the sky. I know it's not as momentous as the destruction of earth, but as a pet owner, I can't imagine having to go through that pain every day.

I noticed in watching this ep again that Trip and Reed were putting on rough voices. I suppose it was to portray age and/or the effects of the rigors of 12 years of rough living.

When Trip says "We can't just run up the white flag", I couldn't help but think "Why not? Are you in love, and always will you be?"

This ep was also the first time I noticed that Jolene has a little bit of a cleft at the end of her nose. It's small and cute, not Malden-esque. And I am really digging that ponytail look, even with the receding hairline. I never got why she had to have the crewcut in the first place.

Pippin, Porthos was actually in the Ceti Alpha V scenes originally, but they must have been cut. The original "production reports" on the ST site mentioned the make up process that they did for the dog. That was the only disappointment I had with "Twilight," because I'd been looking forward to seeing how that turned out.

I'd read that too, but since Porthos did not appear at all on screen (scene cuts or not), I'm assuming that he had died.

I just watched this, I'm so glad to finally see what you guys have all been raving about for months.

I think I'm just going to babble excitedly. Captain Charles Tucker sounds so right. Watching the Earth and the Enterprise blow up...wow, just wow.

Bakula was fantastic. His reaction to learning that Earth had been destroyed was the Bakula we all know and love. The Vulcan bowl cut did make him look like a prat, though.

Malcolm with a goatee? Mmmmmmm. Poor, poor Mayweather. T'Pol rocked her uniform.

I thought you just had to look at a redshirt funny to kill it... but i digress.

Now that we've seen T'Pol's crack-addicted ass, I think that this can explain how Archer being out of commission allowed the Earth to be destroyed. CRACK HEAD would have been in command for the last half of the season, and that could easily explain crappy command decisions that Quantum may not have made.

Anybody else agree with this?

T'Pol might have been discovered using sooner by Phlox, or she might have simply stopped because she lacked the time or privacy to use the Trellium.

I still think the point of divergence had to come when Shran turned up. He would never have been as helpful to a ship commanded by T'Pol.

I thought the turning point was when T'Pol rammed the other ship to detach the boarders.

Going over the story, T'Pol said they found the weapon too late since they had been following the kemocite (I know that's spelled wrong) on some cargo ship. So the battle where the ship was a battering ram was too late, the weapon was being launched. Or, something like that. At any rate, I thought one of the major problems was was that they had a hard time tracking the kemocite and it was a false "scent" as it were.

In the current timeline, with Shran's help, they discovered a test of a prototype. And then went back for more scans and found Degra and ... well, you know. This would not have happened had T'Pol been in charge because Shran's involvement was rather pivotal.

Furthermore, the events of "Strategem" probably just plain wouldn't have happened without Archer-- T'Pol wouldn't have thought of that trick, it's not her style. And they wouldn't have found Azati Prime as soon without that.

I always thought that it was simply a variation of the butterfly effect. The point of divergence seems to be at the time of Twilight since everything is different, e.g. Trip not taking a dive off the war engine in Similitude (strictly speaking we don't know that but T'Pol seemed to be very put of by the cloning strategy so it's not particularly likely that she would choose that way out. Consequently Trip would die in the alternate reality if Similitude had taken place).

Except that Trip was alive to become captain in Twilight. But probably, the entire situation wouldn't have happened, and he wouldn't have fallen in the first place. But certainly Strategem wouldn't have taken place, and Degra's information was the only reason they were able to get to the weapon before it was launched.

Just a heads up that Twilight is being rerun on June 30 at 9:00 P.M. EST.

Sorry if this has been mentioned upthread, but don't the events of "The Council"/"Countdown"/"Zero Hour" make a lot of what happened in "Twilight"'s future improbable? The Xindhi would probably be wiped out by the Sphere Builders once they had served their purpose? The expanse would have...well, expanded, changed space and pretty much wipe out Xhindi space, right? The Sphere Builders weren't going to change that part of their plan just becaus T'Pol was in command...

It is not stated anywhere how long it will take for the spheres to change the Expanse into something inhabitable for the sphere-builders. The spheres are apparently some 1000 years old and the guy from Harbinger still croaked after a few days. There's no reason to think that an additional 12 years will make that much of a difference.

I was rewatching this episode again today, and a way to make the "storytelling" half of the episode even more dramatic occurred to me. T'Pol would tell Archer the story every day, right?

Every time the show came out of a flashback, I would have put Archer and T'Pol in different clothes; make it rain during one part of the story, snow during another - creating the illusion that we're following the story through days or weeks of life on Ceti Alpha V.

Archer doesn't remember any previous day, so the disjointed environment would make you feel a bit like Archer himself.

That would work, except for the fact that this day was special. It was, after all, the last day T'Pol had to tell him the story. I personally prefer that they kept it to only one day, as it gave the illusion that this was all that could be remembered. They did do a bit of a cut through in the intro, when Archer woke up in time to watch the earth get blown up.

Well, T'Pol had been telling the story for years on Ceti Alpha V - we'd just see parts of a different telling every time, showing her repetitive life while emphazising Archer's.

Interesting idea. But from the first moment, this day's "version" was clearly made "special." And T'Pol said she usually didn't go through the whole thing.