When the
producers said they wanted to focus an entire season on the
same mission, they weren't kidding. Since the last season
finale, the Enterprise has been on the hunt for the evil Xindi.
And even though this week's episode takes place twelve years
in the future, that mission remains the focus.
The opener
shows a confused Archer stumbling out of bed as his ship is
being attacked. When a security guy tries to keep him confined
to his quarters, Archer knocks him out Kirk style and breaks
into the bridge. There T'Pol, in Star Fleet garb, tells him
to go to his room just as the ominous spinning Xindi Death
Star blows Earth away like it was Alderaan or something.
Blackout.
Happy
theme song.
The commercial
break is so long Archer ages twelve years. He wakes up again,
gray haired and wrinkled. His forehead is a little higher,
too. Dazed and confused he makes his way into a post-modern
kitchen where a slightly aged, long haired T'Pol fixes breakfast.
Her Star Fleet uniform has given away to a more traditional
red casual.
And it's
story time.
Once upon
a time in a dangerous expanse on the edge of known space,
Archer and T'Pol walk the corridors of the Enterprise. Just
then an anomaly strikes the ship. It's so powerful they're
knocked back, and then frozen in mid air momentarily. This
anomaly escaped from the Matrix. T'Pol is trapped under a
piece of something and Archer risks his life to free her.
Just as he lifts the "thing," another Matrix blast
ripples through the ship, knocking him flat on his back, leaving
some CG effect to ripple through his face.
T'Pol
further explains that the anomaly left behind a infestation
of space/time parasites that cloud his brain, and stop him
from forming long-term memories. Now he can only remember
what happened up until the point of the accident.
ACCESSING
STAR TREK DATA BANKS….
PLOT MATCH
IDENTIFIED…
STAR TREK:
THE NEXT GENERATION
EPISODE: FUTURE IMPACT (NO. 182)
SYNOPSIS: RIKER AWAKENS TO FIND 16 YEARS HAVE PASSED
BUT IT NOW ON VHS OR DVD ON AMAZON.COM
In "Future
Impact" Riker was told he'd contracted a disease that
stopped long-term memories from forming anytime after his
accident. But in reality he was a play-thing on a child's
holo-deck. So this episode is totally different. Really.
T'Pol's
tale continues. Without Archer around T'Pol makes some questionable
choices, including performing an impressive kamikaze move
which blows out their warp nacel. With low power they're unable
to stop the Xindi attack - which we saw in the opening. All
of humanity is destroyed. Galaxy wide. Only 600 humans remain
on an outpost guarded by the last remaining human ships.
So everyday
Archer relives the same thing, with T'Pol re-explaining the
events. She'd devoted her life to him, because he destroyed
his memory saving hers. How Vulcan.
Dr. Phlox
shows up, and after ten years, he finally feels he's discovered
a cure to the memory clouds. They have to use a warp drive
to erase the parasites. Fortunately, Enterprise still orbits
their outpost. Now captained by the aged Trip, they set up
Archer in the engineering room.
JUST THEN!!!
An alien spy shows up, as a scout for the Xindi. Enterprise
is forced to stop the experiment to defend the outpost. But
they were able to pull off one of the procedures and they
make a startling discovery. One that will create a loophole
in space time if you really think about it, or if you just
accept it, you can move on with the plot.
Once a
parasite is removed from Archer's brain, they pull a Back
to the Future and are removed from every picture ever
taken. Living outside of the space time continuum, if they're
killed they're removed from time. But ah, then if they were
removed from time how did they know they were there? And how
did they remove them if they were never there? Chicken or
egg?
There
isn't enough time to complete the procedure since the Xindi
are swarming the Enterprise, so Archer blows a subspace bomb
in his head, removing the parasites from his head and from
all timelines.
So, back
in the present, Archer wakes up, and they rehash some of the
dialogue because to them they've never said it before. And
the episode ends with a dash of irony as T'Pol plays nurse
to Archer.
THE END
Next week
we may actually get a real break from the Xindi as Enterprise
pays homage to the "paraleal Earth" episodes of
the original Star Trek, visiting a planet where the
old west is still new.
In the
meantime, this week's episode achieves an alien ranking score
of…
WORMHOLE
ALIENS (or the Profits) for the delightful aliens that live
outside of time, and screw up any sort of temporal logic in
the story line.
