Review

This episode is kind of a hybrid of TNG: All Good Things, DS9: The Visitor, and Voy: Before and After. There's a little Voy: Year of Hell in there too, regarding Archer's sacrifice. Yes, the episode is a conceptual rehash, but easily forgiven. I'd say episodes like this are less a rehash and more a tradition. Besides, the four episodes I previously mentioned were all spectacular, two of them even receiving a rating of ten. Well, one thing's for sure. T'Pol and Trip sure made bad captains! T'Pol permanently wrecks a warp nacelle and Trip gets the ship destroyed! Gold star! ;) We've seen Earth in jeopardy many times, even destroyed offscreen. But we've never seen Earth downright explode in an episode before. An interesting stunt to pull. Additionally, I was fascinated to see the bridge of Enterprise shot off during this episode, much the same way the viewscreen of the Enterprise E was blown out and the bridge was exposed to space in Star Trek X: Nemesis. Indeed, this episode features a myriad of wonderful visual effects. Aside from that, an obvious discussion point about this episode concerns the Archer / T'Pol relationship. We know, painfully, from Ent: A Night in Sickbay how much Archer is attracted to her, but this episode presents the information much more tastefully. Their relationship isn't elaborated a great deal though. It's hard to get someone to fall in love with you if they can't form any new long term memories. My one complaint about this episode is that it doesn't end the way DS9: The Visitor does in the sense that Archer did not retain a memory of the events. If he had, this episode could have easily been worth ten points.