Twilight

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Captain Archer comes down with a case of 'Memento' Disorder.  He can't form new long-term memories and 12 years have gone by with nothing he can recall to show for it. Like Star Trek itself? Oh, too soon?

T'Pol has been explaining a longer and longer version of his history every few hours. Patience, thy name is Vulcan Nurse! And the telling gets more tragic all the time, too. First, the Xindi mission under her command was a complete failure. The entire Earth was destroyed, then any place humans might have ever sat on. Mars. Alpha Centauri. Vega Colony. She doesn't mention Terra Nova but frankly who would care either way?

There are 6000 humans left and counting down. They live, eggs-in-one-basket style, on Ceti Alpha V. Yeah, the one with horrible brain-eating earwigs. Humans can't catch a break! We are treated to superb action sequences including the Earth's big kaboom, the little kabooms of humanity's rag-tag fugitive fleet, and a lone Reptilian Xindi stabbed by a Zefram Cochrane statue. Eat it, kaiju!

In the future, Trip commands Enterprise, Reed commands Intrepid, and Hoshi commands one new rank pin and one new haircut! And, speaking of new haircuts, Phlox devoted a decade to the cure... but on the bright side it's RETROACTIVE. Once eradicated, Archer's brain bugs actually disappear out of old photographs as per the McFly Corollary.

"Twilight" is inevitably a hundred times better than its vampire namesake. I can run you the list of Trek Temporal Reset Buttons, but what the hell. I love this genre and I love these characters! Although T'Pol lives with Archer, and presumably cuts his hair, it is left rather ambiguous whether they have... slathered each other with decontamination gel! So to speak. I certainly hope she got SOME perks out of the decade that never was.