Finding themselves (after last season's cliff-hanger) in the ruined city (on the edge of ... where?) of his own making, Daniels manages with unmet gaze and shifty answers to declare time travel for Archer as "too complicated." Fortunately a library remains (or perhaps they just found Sam Cogley's house) and though Daniels is wrong about the library's data, he's convinced that capturing Archer was the Suliban motive rather than framing Enterprise (the Warp 5 Program). Too bad about your colonists.

Lacking electricity or tools, MacGyver-Daniels builds a time machine from Archer's stone knife and bear-skin. (Like in high school - yeah, maybe for Wesley! That's it! Daniels is like Wesley!). The Suliban detect a "temporal signature" in a turbolift. T'Pol is tortured, then contacted by Archer, who leaves her in her stupor with little more than, "Trust me." He uses Daniels' magic box to leap onto Silik, then kidnaps him back to Enterprise. The Vulcans don't care and Ambassador Pointy calls Archer "reckless and irresponsible" and "a danger to the quadrant." (Yeah but Archer knows about the Federation and the Romulan Star Empire! And no matter how snooty the points may be, they sure build purdy ships.)

Mayweather - Phlox - Porthos? - that's about all the mention they got. As for the rest, Trip gets points for finally doing something engineer-like, routing the wall comms. A claustrophobic Sato crawled many meters through NX-01 innards, on her back in the tunnel (like Helen Noel in "Dagger of the Mind"?), and comically loses her shirt. Reed captures enemy weapons but gets captured himself and receives a real beating. (The Suliban may not know jack about temporal wars but they certainly can deliver a good beating when they need to.)

The effects of the Enterprise and the Helix vessels were uniformly beautiful and inspiring. The ship showed a few subtle structural differences, perhaps introduced during the installation of the "in case of emergency" pyrotechnics. The phase cannon was good to see again. Scenes at the end were obviously green screened and it disturbed my suspension tremendously.

No real shock here is the null plot. Clearly no matter how bad it may look (AKA Part 1) it can change with proper toys (Part II). I mean, I actually care more about the unseen innocent colonists than for Daniels! It was great to see these friends again, even through this rusty script. But shock them instead - and with them, us - with a wave of good stories. (And thanks for not touching "Faith of the Heart.")


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