Strange New Worlds: Hegemony, Part II

I was on vacation when Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finally returned after a painfully long, nearly two-year absence. It returned with two episodes. And next week, I'll be off to Gen Con. All of that pretty much guarantees I'll be behind on the show (or at least, blogging about it) for most of the season. But I'll never catch up if I don't start. So, here I dive into the season three premiere, "Hegemony, Part II."

Enterprise is severely damaged in battle with the Gorn, but new arrival Scotty may have a way for the ship to at least stay in the hunt to track their abducted landing party. Yet still -- the ship can't be in two places as once... and it soon becomes clear that it also needs to be warning the rest of Starfleet of an imminent invasion fleet.

It's been so long since Strange New Worlds last delivered a new episode that I'd honestly forgotten we left on a cliffhanger. (Certain other episodes in season two loomed so much larger than the finale.) And now that we're back to resolve it, we're kind of forced to confront the fact that resolving cross-season cliffhangers is not something Star Trek has ever done especially well. Even their best could only be a letdown from an excellent first half. (And let's put a pin in "The Best of Both Worlds" for a moment here.)

However, I was coming to Strange New Worlds in the middle of a re-watch of Enterprise, and the contrast was striking. I've noted before that Strange New Worlds really strives for different genres and tones in different episodes, and here the aim seemed to be for a straight-up action affair. In my re-watch of Enterprise, that's been what that show tries to default to. And I feel like Strange New Worlds was running circles around Enterprise with this episode.

Sure, television production and visual effects have advanced more than two decades, so Strange New Worlds can put more bang for the buck on the screen and gin up thrills. But that's not what I'm talking about. In "Hegemony, Part II," I felt more connected to the stakes and the characters than I ever have watching Enterprise -- and I chalk that up to the fact that even amid an episode that's essentially trying to be a summer action movie, it made room for important character beats.

For Captain Pike, every action he took was colored by the circumstances of knowing the woman he loves might be dying right at that moment. Chapel and Spock were put in a challenging situation where they had to work together despite their own personal situation. Every moment of La'an's struggles aboard the Gorn ship were steeped in her own past experiences, a sense that her life may have all been building to this moment of revenge. Ortegas being forced to endure a horrific situation while rising to the occasion resulted in a clear trauma that will have ripple effects later in the season. (Because this is a show that cares about consequences.)

And there was at least one solid character moment that wasn't just about life and death. Pelia putting on her teacher hat to motivate Scotty in exactly the right (if slightly cruel) way was a great moment for her. And positioning her character to show us "how Scotty becomes Scotty" is just great for the show overall. 

I didn't exactly love the story as a whole. I was particularly bored that the convenient resolution of the crisis -- putting all the Gorn to sleep -- was essentially the exact resolution of the "Best of Both Worlds" cliffhanger I mentioned earlier. But as I basically said about the season two finale, even a "bad" episode of Strange New Worlds is really just a "not as good" episode.

I kind of waffle on what mark to give "Hegemony, Part II." Maybe a B+, because it's clearly better than this kind of episode on Enterprise, and should get a mark that clearly reflects that. Maybe a B, because that's what I gave "Hegemony" part one, and I don't think I want to say I liked this better. But flip the coin either way and my feeling is basically the same: I love the way this show does what it does, and I'm so glad its back.

And They're Off!

"Previously on... my vacation..."

On mid-afternoon of day three, my husband and I were just heading to our second event at Bardstown Bourbon Company, Rickhouse Thieving. A guide led us across the grounds and inside one of the distillery's many rickhouses. There, he talked about the distillation process -- with an expected emphasis on maturation -- as we were served samples of three bourbons pulled straight from the cask. That itself was not a completely new experience, as we've attended the annual Cask Thief event at Stranahan's in Denver several times now. Still, the massive scale of this rickhouse, with its seemingly endless rows and towers of barrels, was quite a sight to see. (And for me, Bardstown Whiskey in pretty much any form is a delight.)

While we were in the rickhouse, another afternoon downpour opened up like it had on our first day. The rain on the roof made quite a roar inside the massive building, and the claps of thunder echoed throughout the space in a slightly eerie way. Our tour waited inside as our guide called for a cart driver to come shuttle us all back, a few at a time, to the main building.

Even though the rain let up before too long, it left mud everywhere -- and continued to come and go over the next hour. So we had to cancel a short hike we'd found in the area, one of our planned non-whiskey activities. But... checks notes... beer is not whiskey. So after making our way back to Louisville and regrouping for a while at our hotel, we headed out to hit a couple of breweries that came highly recommended by online enthusiasts.

The online community went two for two this time. First up was Atrium Brewing, where a whole flight of taster glasses we shared didn't have a single dud in the bunch. One of the apparent regular beers there, Key Lime Cheesecake Boy, was delicious -- and the focus that day of a special release of variant flavors. Sadly, all but one of the variants had already kicked, but there were too many delicious alternatives on their beer list to fret much over what we'd missed.

Second was Gravely Brewing -- a music and retro themed spot -- where there was one thing in particular I wanted to try: Sable, a dark cream ale. I'd never even heard of such a thing, but it was a delightfully different mashup of a cream ale and a... porter, maybe?... that gave "dark beer" richness and "light beer" drinkability. We sat at the bar and slowly enjoyed vintage reruns of The Price Is Right played on the TV. (Staying home sick from school had never been like this.) Dinner that night was at Parlour, a great pizza place in walking distance of the hotel that I'd never hit on my work trips. (But if I go back for work again, before GAMA moves to Baltimore, I definitely will go there again!) And with that, we called it a night.

We were heading home to Denver the next afternoon... but with just enough time after breakfast for something else. So we headed to Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Absolutely perfect would have been to see a horse race (and place a small, utterly uninformed bet). No races were scheduled for that day. But we did the next best thing. We cruised through the on-site museum, and went on a brief guided tour that took us out the stands to overlook the track itself.

Between the museum and the tour, we learned all kinds of fun, random tidbits about the 150-year history of the Derby. (Fillies have won three times; general admission in the center of the track on Derby day unofficially makes that field the third-largest "city" in Kentucky; no horse has ever won starting from the 17th position.) And though I've never in my life had a Mint Julep before this, it felt as though when you're at Churchill Downs, that's the drink you have to try. (I liked it far more than I expected. Let's just say they'd be dangerously refreshing on a hot day.)

 

With our souvenirs padded the best we could inside our luggage, we finally headed back to the airport, dropped off our Bette Midler karaoke car, and brought our Louisville trip to an end. We had a great time, and I especially enjoyed seeing other places beyond a half-mile from the convention center. But as soon as I pickup that set of cylinders and eye droppers for whiskey blending, I'll be able to revisit the trip any night I want to.

House Blend

For day three of the Louisville trip, my husband and I headed south to Bardstown -- the city generally, and ultimately the distillery specifically.

First, we stopped at Heaven Hill, having heard they had both a nice distillery and good bourbons. As to the first -- I can confirm. Heaven Hill is a mega-conglomerate of the bourbon world, and they've used their success to build massive and modern buildings across a huge sprawl of land. That includes a museum you can walk through, full of exhibits detailing the growth of the bourbon industry in Kentucky and many of the people who were pivotal in that history. We walked through (in part because it was interesting; in part because so many people come to Heaven Hill that you can't really do anything else without having booked an experience in advance).

As to whether Heaven Hill has good bourbon? That's almost certainly true as well, no matter your particular taste. That's because they are ultimately the parent company responsible for a huge number of well-known brands. Besides one actually branded "Heaven Hill," they make Elijah Craig, Evan Williams, Pikesville, Bernheim Original, Rittenhouse, and a bunch of others. Of the few we sampled, Larceny struck me as the best -- a brand I certainly remembered seeing back in Denver, though couldn't recall having had before. Your tastes may differ, but Heaven Hill probably has you covered.

We had a little time before scheduled events later in the afternoon, so we made another short stop at the nearby Preservation Distillery. This was the antithesis of Heaven Hill, a place that proudly proclaims itself to be "Bardstown's smallest distillery." Lots of distilleries in the area are set on farmland, but Preservation is still using it that way -- cows roam the grounds, and just a few small buildings are devoted to making bourbon. A lazy cat lounged outside the tasting room entrance, caring nothing for us or anyone else going in to sample. We tried just one whiskey each -- all we had time for, and all they would pour in any case. (Either they don't want to deal with sloppily drunken tourists, or you have to have more money and clout to serve any more than that in Kentucky?) Small though Preservation is, a map on the bar showed the other states they have managed to distribute in, with Colorado being one. So perhaps in the right mood, I might have some bourbon from them again some day.

The next stop was the focus of the day. We went to Bardstown Bourbon Company, a relative new kid on the distilling block, but already a personal favorite of mine. We had booked two experiences in advance, and the first one turned out to be one of the great highlights of the trip -- a one-hour session called "The Art of Blending." A guide took us into a backroom they call "The Library," a fancy, decorated room where the shelves were filled not with books, but with bourbons -- from throughout history, and from a wide variety of distilleries. Our guide pointed out a number of interesting and rare bottles, from one actually distilled in the late 1800s (and containing the original spirit!) to a souvenir bottle of Dickel with a distinctive shape that made it a go-to prop on the original Star Trek. 

In this unique setting, each participant in this small event found a station with three drams of different bourbons set up -- two completely different 4-years from Bardstown, and a 12-year from an (officially) unspecified third party. One of Bardstown's own "Fusion Series" of bourbons was made from exactly these three components, with the exact ratios specified on the actual bottles and on a reference sheet in front of us. We got to taste each of the three separate components, and then -- using graduated cylinders and an eye dropper -- measured out the exact blend of the Fusion for ourselves to compare the results and see how each separate whiskey might have influenced the results.

Then it was experimentation time. Each of the seven people attending the event played around with mixtures of our own, ultimately writing down the one we thought turned out best and handing it to our guide. (Remember to pay attention to color, aroma, and taste, we were reminded.) Then one blend was selected at random for everyone to make, sample, and comment on. It of course totally helped my enjoyment of the experience that mine happened to be the selected blend... and it seemed to be well-received by all.

Our guide in the class gave us ideas to bring blending home with us from this short class. This can be a way to use up a random, disappointing bottle of whiskey you might have; just grab your own tubes and droppers and start blending -- maybe you can save it! Or this could be the basis of a party with your whiskey-loving friends: invite everyone to bring a bottle, and then get everyone engaged in making blends from those ingredients. You can even make a little competition out of who creates the best blend! I must say, I've already done some "window shopping" for the tools to blend at home.

We had tickets for a second event at Bardstown, but with enough time in between to have lunch at their restaurant. After having been told by both our waiter and our blending class guide that the chicken sandwich in the restaurant was famously good, we decided to put it to the test. Test passed, with flying colors... it was the tastiest fried chicken we had during the whole trip (among more examples than is probably healthy).

Since this post is starting to run long, I'll take this moment to pause the narrative until tomorrow, when I'll pick back up with the rest of this day and the final morning before our flight home.

This Space Is Reserved

For the first full day of our Louisville trip, my husband and I drove east toward Lexington. You can head pretty much any direction out of town and hit half a dozen major bourbon distilleries who distribute nationwide, but our first stop was actually a smaller, local place. In Lawrenceburg, in an unassuming, warehouse-looking building (with a kangaroo statue out front), you'll find Larrikin Bourbon Company.

We were prepared for this place to be hit-or-miss; it was really just a convenient stop before a scheduled tour we had a short while later. But it turned out that this random small batch distillery made really solid stuff. We sampled several good options, with the clear winner being their American Maple -- with just the right amount of "drenched pancake" flavor to be different without actually tasting like syrup.

Well... strike that. Their clear winner was their "Smidge of Maple Bourbon Cream," with a taste surpassed only by the bartender's endless suggestions on how to use it (as an ice cream topper, in hot chocolate, just to name a couple). But leaving a cream-based spirit in a hot car all day just seemed like a supremely bad idea, so the American Maple was the souvenir we took back home.

The next stop was Woodford Reserve, a more-well known brand with a huge operation on a sprawl of beautiful land. We took a guided tour of the place and saw all parts of the operation in full swing -- from fermentation (with giant two-story vats of sweetly bubbling goodness) to barreling (with freshly-filled barrels rolling down a gently-sloping track) to storage (with towers of racked barrels signed by everyone from state celebrities to fellow tourists sneaking in their graffiti) to bottling (sorry, you can't go in that room, but by all means take a peek through the door). Of course, the tour concluded with a guided tasting, sampling five different whiskeys in Woodford Reserve's repertoire.

I have no doubt that you could have a similar tour experience at whatever large bourbon maker might be your personal favorite -- all the big names have built grand buildings that are as much about impressing tourists as making whiskey. But Woodford Reserve has been around long enough for their buildings to receive historical preservation status, and to me the setting felt especially beautiful. I expect the sights we saw on the tour will flash to mind now whenever I have a pour of their bourbon.

We stopped for lunch at a small local place called The Stave. The extensive whiskey list might have you expecting a fancy restaurant, but really the place was a small bar with shelf after shelf of Kentucky bourbons stacked all the way the way to the ceiling -- because of course it is, when you can drive half a mile down the road to get some of them.

We were less than a mile away from another distillery called Castle & Key that merited a much quicker stop. I'd never sampled their stuff before -- but the distillery itself is built on the grounds of a much older, defunct distillery. Those grounds include a stone castle that's been standing since the 1880s, and a large garden area you can wander around. (And on an afternoon not at the height of summer, you might actually want to.) I wasn't wowed by the few things we tasted here, but the stop was more about the venue than the whiskey, so I can hardly say I was disappointed.

The afternoon was slipping away by this point, so we headed back toward Louisville for a non-whiskey activity, a trip to the Louisville Mega Cavern. It's a massive underground space left behind by limestone mining operations, and now you can tour the place... or, in our case, zipline through it. Ever since a trip to California, my husband and I had kept an eye open for novel places for a new zipline experience, and decided to take a chance on this one. I would say it wasn't quite as enjoyable... as you might expect, what really makes the experience is being able to see everything around you (and you obviously don't get that in a cave). Still, it was a fun change of pace -- and you can't drink bourbon all the time, even on the "bourbon trip."

We closed out the evening with a late dinner at Buck's Restaurant, which served a decadent meal of things wrapped in other things (shrimp in bacon, lamb in prosciutto...). When the waiter learned we were in town sampling whiskeys, and had visited Woodford Reserve that day, he brought a tiny splash of an 18-year bourbon from their own extensive collection (arrayed alphabetically around the bar).

Having had a delightful and full day -- and determined not to burn ourselves out with another full day ahead -- we decided that was a fine time to call it a night.

Bourbon and the Rose

I've been to Louisville, Kentucky twice for work. (Attending the GAMA Expo, since it moved there in 2024.) But in the way of work trips, all I got to see was a limited number of things within walking distance of the hotel and convention center. And with all the bourbon (and a few non-bourbon) activities in the surrounding area, is seemed like it might be a destination worth an extended weekend without work. So that's what my husband and I just did for the past four days.

We flew in on Thursday afternoon, rented a Honda Civic Sport... and I briefly wondered why I found those chords it played when you started the car to be so familiar. I put it out of my mind as headed out, checked in at our hotel, and made the most of the remaining day.

I've talked before about the large, canvas craft brewery map we have at home, where we stick pins marking all the places whose beers we've tried over the years. Gold pins mark the places we've been to in person, and my husband and I always look for an opportunity to add one to a new state. We decided to take care of Kentucky right away with a stop at the Bluegrass Brewing Company. Unlike the beer purists in Connecticut (who were shocked when I suggested that two of their beers together might taste great), this place had a blend right on their menu: "Schmeade," a combination of a wheat beer and a fruit beer influenced by the taste of raspberry mead. And it was quite good!

Now -- pausing for a moment to give some background: there's a place in the Denver area that hosts "Whiskey Wednesday" events all summer long, focused on different brands. When we attended one a few months back centered on one of my personal favorites, Bardstown, they revealed that they were now partnered with Green River, and so we got to try one of their offerings as well. Now, on the drive into Louisville, we saw a billboard proclaiming that a new Green River tasting room had opened on Whiskey Row. So with a little time to fill before a scheduled event, we went there and got to sample more of their bourbon and rye. (They don't supplant Bardstown for me, but they're a worthy partner.)

Unfortunately, this was the point where an unplanned activity interrupted the fun: a torrential summer afternoon downpour. I mean downpour. Thankfully, we weren't completely unprepared, having brought rain jackets with us. But we had a place to be at a specific time, and no choice but to go walking out in the weather. The jackets worked, but our shorts, socks, and shoes were utterly waterlogged, causing us to make a quick stop at the hotel to swap out for pants before moving along (still in the rain).

Next up was something we'd bought tickets for ahead of time: a "fill your own bottle" event at Angel's Envy. (Another personal favorite of mine.) You got to taste their standard bourbon (which I know quite well), alongside an ultra-limited single barrel that was exactly what you were about to bottle. You walk up to the counter, apply your own labels, stick the bottle under the machine, fill it, then use a clamp to get the cap on good and tight. (And then, due to some bizarre local liquor law, an employee has to literally take your bottle through the doorway to the next room to hand back to you.) I had imagined that perhaps you'd get to sample a few small batches to pick your personal favorite, so in that sense, this experience didn't quite live up to the imagined hype. Still, I liked the sample taste well enough, and now I have a "bottled by me" Angel's Envy in my cabinet for special occasions.

Everyone was quick and efficient with their bottling. (Even the poor woman from Down Under who was clearly being dragged along to a ton of bourbon activities despite her overwhelming dislike of the stuff. Those friends clearly wanted an extra bottle of single barrel for themselves here.) Because we finished up early, our host took us back to the distilling area to see where most of the magic happens. (Not all; the aging happens in large rickhouses outside of town.)

We had dinner at Merle's Whiskey Kitchen, where we enjoyed some Kentucky fried chicken (no caps on the "fried chicken"). But with the rain a clear deterrent and all the distillery tasting rooms closing early for the evening (our guide at Angel's Envy had called Louisville "the city that sleeps"), we decided we weren't walking anywhere else that evening. So instead, we went for a bonus gold pin on the beer map. We drove north across the river to Indiana and got a gold pin in that state for Floyd County Brewing Company -- a place with less memorable offerings. (But a gold pin is a gold pin.)

And on that journey, with a few more times starting the rental car, I finally clocked what it was about its slow, pulsing chords that sounded familiar. It's 100% the opening of Bette Midler's song, "The Rose." You might not recognize the song by name, but if you've ever seen Napoleon Dynamite, you absolutely know the song. And now you know exactly what it sounds like to start a Honda Civic Sport; the chords finally cut out just a moment before "some say looooooove......"

Considering that we'd only arrived mid-afternoon, we'd fit in a ton of stuff on our first day of the trip. But there was so much more in the days ahead. 

Getting Away, With Murderbot

Many years ago, I blogged about a novella I caught in audiobook format: the first book of the Murderbot Diaries series. Now, that book has been adapted into season one of Apple TV+'s newest sci-fi show, Murderbot.

Alexander Skarsgård stars as the self-named Murderbot, a security droid who has hacked his own systems, freeing him from the requirement to take orders from humans. Yet he must still play along enough to deceive the members of the planetary expedition he's been assigned to. He'd rather just take time to watch his favorite TV shows, but those hapless humans keep putting themselves in mortal danger.

After finishing (and mostly enjoying) All Systems Red years ago, I didn't continue on with the Murderbot Diaries series. In retrospect, I think I allowed my expectations to get the better of me. I had listened to the story in ignorance, enjoying the quirky tone that author Martha Wells had brought to her pastiche of science fiction tropes. Then after the fact, I heard of all the prestigious awards the novella had won, decided "I didn't think it was that good," and drifted away from the follow-ups.

This new Murderbot series gives me a new re-entry point, and I think it's just different enough in all the right ways that this time, it just might stick. If the problem was that the Murderbot Diaries didn't seem like prestige fiction to me, then "problem" solved: Murderbot the TV series does not feel anything like "prestige television."

The series turns up the volume on quirkiness of the source material. The core behavior of each of the human characters is magnified -- everyone a shade odder, more irrational, more creepy, what-have-you. It's possible they aren't even tweaked that much, but that the mere fact of having them embodied by a solid cast of skilled actors makes it feel that way. David Dastmalchian is the one I readily recognized from other work, but it's really a well-cast ensemble throughout, including Noma Dumezweni, Sabrina Wu, Akshay Khanna, Tamara Podemski, and Tattiawna Jones. Together, they really nail the comedy of it all.

Yes, I said comedy, because Murderbot definitely leans into the humor of Wells' writing. This science fiction show is in a half-hour format -- and we're talking half an hour that leaves room for commercials (if there were any). Each of the 10 episodes of season 1 breezes by faster than you could ever imagine. And you have to pay attention, lest one of Alexander Skarsgård's quippy voice-overs slips by unnoticed.

Those TV shows that the Murderbot loves so much? In the series, you get to actually see scenes from them, starring the likes of John Cho, Clark Gregg, Jack McBrayer, and DeWanda Wise. That ensemble within the ensemble serves up the hammiest sci-fi you've ever seen, almost hitting too close to home in showcasing how thin a line really exists between Your Favorite Sci-Fi Series and... whatever this is.

It feels like the mission statement of Murderbot (the show) is to have fun, first and foremost -- a tone well-telegraphed from the opening credits (frenetic animation backed by slightly wacky theme music) to the exasperated voice-over that invariably ends each episode. I give Murderbot a B+. I'm looking forward to the recently-announced season two. And between now and then, I might just make it back to the books that started it all.

Enterprise Flashback: Twilight

If you go by the ratings on IMDb, the highest-rated episode of Star Trek: Enterprise is season three's "Twilight." (8.6 out of 10, as of this posting.) So what happens in that episode, and what did I think I of it?

Twelve years have passed since Enterprise entered the Delphic Expanse. An unfortunate accident has stripped Archer of the ability to form long term memories, and without his leadership of Enterprise, the Xindi succeeded in destroying Earth. The handful of human survivors live on a remote colony, where T'Pol personally cares for her former captain. But now, Phlox may have discovered a way to cure Archer's condition. And because of the strange temporal component to his affliction, the cure may be the key to winding back the clock.

I will come right out and say that I do think "Twilight" is a pretty good episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. But I truly hope it's not literally the best one in my eyes once I've finished this re-watch, because there's a ceiling on how much I truly enjoyed it. Mostly, that's because I find it to be a Frankenstein's monster of sewn-together bits lifted from other previous Star Trek episodes. It's a bit "All Good Things...", a bit "The Visitor," a bit "Year of Hell," a bit "Timeless," and possibly a few other episodes too. Since some of those episodes are regarded among the absolute best of their respective Star Trek series, a tinkered version of them will inevitably come out worse in comparison.

On the other hand, there's something about "Twilight" that defies an across-the-board one-to-one comparison to any of those episodes. It's taking single ingredients from all of them, and incorporating them in a new recipe that does somehow feel new, if familiar. Plus, there are a few new ingredients that make all the difference. Some are just fun Trek fan service, from seeing first T'Pol and then Trip become ship's captain, to seeing aged-up characters with new hairstyles and the haunted looks of what they've endured over a decade. Especially fun is the twisted irony that the last survivors of Earth set up on Ceti Alpha V -- a planet that we know from Wrath of Khan will become a barren wasteland in a century or so.

But there are more emotional elements that I find more worthwhile than all that. In the midst of this arc about saving the Earth from destruction, it's clever for this episode to find a way to show us just what that would look like. It's smart to position T'Pol as the caretaker for Archer when he develops a kind of dementia, an intriguing way to showcase the subsumed emotion beneath her logical exterior. We feel for her, imagining the way she had to repeat the same story to Archer, day after day, for over a decade. We feel for him, watching him struggle to still contribute to the mission, but being frustrated at every turn by his condition.

It's too bad, though, that it all has to end with yet another "total reset" like Voyager's "Year of Hell" two-parter. For me, it renders the story just a notch above "it was all a dream," stripping it of its full impact as it literally removes any lasting consequences. To me, it undermines the complete enjoyment of the admittedly cool moments we got along the way: T'Pol's desperate battle tactic to ram a docked ship into the enemy, the wild frenzy of Archer stabbing an invader with his Zefram Cochrane statue, or seeing the bridge torn open to space in an inspired VFX shot.

Other observations:

• This episode serves up an almost-Quantum Leap-style shot, where Scott Bakula looks into a mirror and his character is surprised by his own reflection.

• The writers continue their poor treatment of Travis Mayweather, this time killing his character off in an early attack so that he doesn't even live to the future with the rest of the main characters.

• There's a weird subplot about the Xindi paying a Yridian to track Phlox. The implication seems to be that they somehow know that Phlox is on the cusp of figuring out how to cure Archer and reset history. But... how do they know that? Phlox himself doesn't even know that curing Archer will defeat the Xindi, until he begins to actually do it. (But if they don't know it, why are they after Phlox at all?)

• Lots of great stunt work in this episode in the two separate sequences where Enterprise is boarded.

• Reportedly, the idea for this episode was originally pitched on Star Trek: Voyager, and centered on Janeway and Chakotay. It was apparently rejected because the Powers That Be refused to pair the two romantically in that way, even in an alternate future that would be undone.

I feel like "Twilight" centers on character in a way few Enterprise episodes to this point have. It's a shame that any emotional development is rolled back by the ending. But for spectacle alone, I'll put it a notch ahead of "Year of Hell"... which puts it at a B+ in my book.